The overwhelming success of Eve Ensler’s gynocentric confessional The Vagina Monologues — which fashioned a series of revealing narratives from Ensler’s scores of interviews with ladies about their privates — seemed to cry out for some answer-song response from the male member. We didn’t have to wait long. Scant weeks after Ensler brought the Monologues to Boston, we received, within hours of each other, announcements for The Penis Confessions and The Penis Dialogues, the only surprise — or is it? — being that both are being produced by women.

“I couldn’t get tickets to The Vagina Monologues, so I haven’t even seen it,” admits the musician, performance artist, and painter Cynthia von Buhler (the Countess, Women of Sodom), who will present Confessions as part of Gallery Bershad’s going-out-of-business bacchanal this Saturday. “But I’ve heard an awful lot about it and I like the idea. Mine is really nothing like The Vagina Monologues, I’m just taking the idea from it. When you hear the title, you automatically picture vaginas talking. So in mine the penises will be talking. I’ve got all my props together already. There will be a confession booth. I’ve been thinking about confessing as a cleansing and purifying act, almost like — not to give too much away, but like a toilet.”

Von Buhler has been soliciting cock talk via e-mail from her male friends. “I’ve been getting really interesting stuff. Nothing too bad: people don’t want to tell you the really bad stuff even though they know the performance will be anonymous, because they still know I’ll know. I’ve gotten a lot of jokes, which I don’t like. When I get a joke, I respond and say, ‘Look, I’m really serious about this.’ With some people I’m getting too much information, these big long stories about their sexual escapades. I’m really just looking for succinct one-liners, like if you were going to confess your sins to a priest.”

Anne Jenness, a 50-year-old veteran of the musical theater and occasional stand-up comedienne, will open The Penis Dialogues at the Comedy Connection a week from Monday, as a tryout for a longer show to be produced at a venue to be named later. “It’s a spoof on the title of The Vagina Monologues,” she specifies. “There’s no social value to it at all. I’m just updating show tunes, from musicals to operas, and throwing in a bunch of celebrity references. You know, Hamlet: ‘To pee or not to pee.’ All things to do with the comings and goings of the penis. People are asking me, ‘Are you interviewing penises?’ I’m not going to use her [Ensler’s] material. I don’t want to get sued. You know, Elton John: ‘Rocket Penis.’ ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia’s Penis?’, for Elizabeth Taylor. That sort of thing. But maybe we could hand out questionnaires, like on cards, at the beginning: ‘If your penis were George W. Bush, what would it say?’ Maybe, I don’t know.”

It seemed much of The Penis Monologues was up in the air, so to speak, when we spoke; but if Jenness’s ad-libbing on the phone was any indication, she will be drawing from no small reservoir of material. “I’ve been doing musical theater all my life, so I see this as a little cabaret, snippets of songs and so on. I’ve been wanting to do a one-woman show forever, but I didn’t have a title. Everybody always said, ‘Why don’t you do something you like?’ And so I have. There’s Something About Mary: ‘Mary had a little penis’ . . . or maybe Peggy Lee, [singing] ‘Is that all there is?’ Originally I thought about trying to do The Penis Dialogues without actually using the word ‘penis,’ by just alluding to it, and that would be the joke. But I think that’s probably not going to work.”

Cynthia von Buhler presents The Penis Confessions this Saturday, April 21, at 8 p.m. at Gallery Bershad, 99 Dover Street in Somerville. Call (617) 629-9400 extension 3. Anne Jenness debuts The Penis Dialogues a week from Monday, April 30, at 8 p.m. at the Comedy Connection at Faneuil Hall. Tickets are $10; call (617) 248-9700.

Issue Date: April 19-26, 2001