The “Veiled Monologues,” at the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles from tonight to 27 March 2010 offer a rare opportunity to enter the intimate sphere of Muslim women’s life without prudishness or voyeurism.  This original project started in 1998 in Amsterdam, when the director Adelheid Roosen was hosting in her kitchen four Moroccan women living in the Netherlands, who asked her to conduct a theatre workshop about their “double loyalty”: the paradox of their everyday life shared between the Dutch culture and that of their parents. Meanwhile, Roosen was also engaged in one of the first productions of the famous “Vagina Monologues,” staged in Holland in 2003.

Regretting that “The Vagina Monologues” are addressed mainly to Western women, Roosen decided to interview 70 women from Muslim countries living in the Netherlands.  Women of ages ranging from 17 to 85 and very different backgrounds talked freely about a variety of subjects including sensuality, tradition, the Koran, tenderness, rape, maternity, homosexuality, circumcision, desire… As a result, the 12 intense, funny and moving monologues combine the politically correct and incorrect and break the stereotype of the Muslim woman.

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