First production meeting...

Was tonight. We were 9 people including me, huddled in a small coffeehouse in downtown Lancaster. What an inspiring group of women, all of whom are committed to bringing the Vagina Monologues to Lancaster. Wicked. I'm so pleased.

things sort of puttering along...

I'm waiting for warp speed to kick in, but now, two weeks after peppering the town with flyers, it's coming together. Sort of.

I had lunch last week with Barry Kornhauser, who is going to be the director. He's the playwrite in residence at the Fulton Opera House downtown, and is very 'in the know' about everything. He's also brilliant.

Maria is going to co-produce, and we've met twice now. She's incredibly keen, which is really inspiring.

We're having the first meeting of the production team on November 26. Please get in touch if you want to come.

All we need now is money. Maria's boyfriend is in a band, and he wants to do a benefit concert for us, which would be brilliant. Fingers crossed....

More soon.

Ok. Vaginal Update. I spent the weekend peppering the town with flyers trying to get a production team together. I've had some response, which is great, and one girl, Maria, is really keen to take the project on, and I think she'll be a co-producer. Now that is excellent news!

I just about have the venue sorted, and a director. I had a great call with a woman who heads up the Lancaster Campaign today (empowering downtown businesses and neighbourhoods) and she gave me some names of people to speak to as well, so that's all looking up.

What I'm really stressing about, at the moment, is sponsorship, and getting someone on board who is good with that.

Piece of cake. It'll come....

I'm not as overwhelmed as I was. It still hits me regularly. Especially when I do something stupid like compare my production to all the other productions out there. Bad move. It's not a race. It's a Vagina Celebration.

I can't believe it's actually going to happen. I've told too many people about it now for it not to happen. Wicked!

Right. Vagina Action Update. Yesterday evening I emailed 7 people including the local tv station, the local commercial radio station, the local npr station, a local cafe, the local barfly magazine, the local poet's society, and I think that's it. I've received four responses so far, all of which were positive, and just this minute the guy from the NPR station called me back to talk about how they could help advertise it. Very good.

Also, my friend Lisa wrote back to me with some names of people to follow up with, which I've done today...local businesses and some prominent women in the community.

So I'm not quite so overwhelmed anymore. I have a focus, which, right now is to get a production team. If you take things one small step at a time, you can get a lot accomplished. You just have to stay focused. That's what I'm seeing. It would be easy for me to go into a complete panic about sponsorship at the moment, because I have, like, no experience with asking people for money, but I've realised that the best thing I can do right now is focus on getting a team of people together, and let one of them take on that project. So that's my quest for the next week.

It's only been a week, and already it's been a wild ride. I don't know what it'll be like come March...

Ok, just so we get things straight here, I am feeling very overwhelmed at the moment. I need to get together a production team. I'm starting to get a little frantic. But frantic is a wasted energy. So I'm going to stop being frantic. But in the meantime, I just wanted to add, for the record, that I'm a little overwhelmed right now. Ok, a lot overwhelmed. The best thing to do when you're overwhelmed is to not think about how overwhelmed you are and just get in there and play the game. So that's what I'm going to do. Vagina Power saves the day...

Ok, this is the first official post to Vday Lancaster - we got approval to produce one benefit production of Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues in Lancaster, PA (otherwise known as Amish country) and people are all either thrilled with the idea or they doubt we'll be able to pull it off. This town is surrounded by an anti-vagina aura and we're showing everyone how wrong that impression is, and making it on the list of vagina-friendly cities!

How did this all start? During the time I was living in London I shared an office with the UK Coordinators and got to see what an amazing, life-changing play this is, and how it profoundly impacted the lives of the people involved with the productions. My UK visa expired and I had to move home for a year (getting back to England has been a different quest, though that's being sorted and I'm doing my MBA there next year, thanks very much!) and I was desperate to bring the Vagina Monologues to my hometown. So that brings us to now - I've got some great people helping me (if you'd like to be one, just email me!) and as I get sponsorships and more people involved I will post them up here as well, so that everyone can see what a brilliantly vagina-friendly town this is!

More coming soon...stay tuned!