Eve Ensler: dancing for a free world for women

In July 1518, Frau Troffea began to dance feverishly in the streets of Strasbourg. She did not stop for almost a week and before long others had joined in. By the time a month had passed, there were around 400 jigging away, giving history one of its most pronounced outbreaks of "dancing mania", a so-called epidemic, now characterised as a collective hysterical disorder, that cropped up in several medieval towns and cities in mainland Europe.

This month, Europe's women will dance again; in fact, they will dance all over the world. With any luck, though, they will not be classified as witches in need of blood-letting. On 14 February, all those women who have been affected by violence are invited to go out into the street and dance. The global event is part of the One Billion Rising campaign and is the idea of the writer and activist Eve Ensler, the Frau Troffea of her day.

Charismatic, petite, yet tough, Ensler is regarded by her friends and admirers, such as the feminist writer Marianne Schnall, as exactly "what the world needs right now". Her decision to mark the 15th anniversary of her annual V-Day campaign this month by mounting an even more ambitious scheme is typical of the "bold and indomitable spirit" Schnall describes.

"When she first set V-Day's mission, she decided to make it 'to end violence against women and girls' and those words were chosen purposefully," wrote Schnall. "It wasn't something a little less idealistic or diluted like 'to work to help stop violence against women' – she set the bar pure and simple on ending it: no compromises, no excuses."

At 59, Ensler, who grew up in the comfortable New York suburb of Scarsdale, is best known as the originator of the influential The Vagina Monologues show; a feminist performance franchise that has allowed women in many different cultures and countries to talk publicly about the taboos that have hampered their lives. Out of this success, she has created not just the concept of V-Day, but a number of safe houses for abused women; in 2011, a City of Joy in Congo was built as a refuge for those recovering from rape and violent abuse.

Now, with One Billion Rising, Ensler aims to instigate a revolutionary movement, what she calls a "woman spring", mirroring activism in the Arab world. "We want to shake the globe (literally!) and announce that it's time to end violence against women and girls," she has announced.

So the women of Strasbourg may well dance again this Valentine's Day. Certainly, they will be dancing in places such as Strasburg in Pensylvania, where the local paper has advertised an event in the nearby city park. Organised sessions are also planned in Mogadishu, Rothesay and Dhaka. In London, Ontario, the fun will include a drum circle and a choreographed dance routine, while in our London Ensler will attend a sold-out event at the Café de Paris alongside actress Thandie Newton and other notable campaigners.

The London stop will be the last before she flies on to Congo to join the women living in the City of Joy for V-Day. Last week, Ensler was in India in the aftermath of the gang rape of Jyoti Singh in Delhi, witnessing what she described as "the biggest breakthrough in sexual violence ever seen", when thousands of Indians spontaneously protested against the attack.

As a girl, she suffered physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her father, a respectable food company executive. "I could never imagine life past 30 and I came close to making sure I didn't get there," she wrote in her memoir, Insecure at Last. In her early 20s, she fell into drugs and alcohol, later cleaning up when she met and married Richard McDermott, divorcing him 10 years later, and adopted his teenage son, Dylan, now an actor.

Looking back, Ensler has said she wishes she could have kept her youthful anger, but not turned it in on herself, "because it really turned into depression and self-hatred and self-destructive behaviour".

In adulthood, she worked with homeless women and in the anti-nuclear movement, writing plays that made her a name in select circles. Then came The Vagina Monologues, which opened on Broadway in 1996 and has since been performed in 140 countries. In France, there was Les Monologues du Vagin and in Italy, I Monologhi della Vagina.

The show, subtitled An Anthropological Exploration, comprises testimony, some funny, some grim, garnered from more than 200 interviews and presented in the monologue form that Ensler says comes naturally. "Often, women are not listened to and the monologue forces you to listen," she explains.

In Britain, performers have included Rita Tushingham, Jerry Hall, Sophie Okonedo, Marianne Jean-Baptiste and Meera Syal. Also among their number was singer and comedian Jackie Clune. "It was brilliant," she recalled this weekend. "I've been a feminist since I knew the word, but it was great to be in something so commercial that was feminist in its ideas. Some people used to walk out, but it was great hearing all the women in the audience saying the word 'cunt'."

Clune's impression of Ensler was of a "very driven woman" who had absorbed feminism completely so that it informed all her thoughts.

In America, a number of A-list stars, including Meryl Streep, have been on board from the beginning and are now promoting One Billion Rising. Jane Fonda has explained that her passion for the cause comes from her work with abused girls and from her mother's experience of abuse as an eight-year-old girl. "It damaged her life for ever," Fonda says. "She was never able to not feel guilty. We need to stop violence against women and when that happens everything in the world will change."

Anne Hathaway has also stepped up. "A cause like One Billion Rising is something I want to scream about, and I want you to take that scream seriously because I don't fall out of nightclubs. Of course, in the court of celebrity, if you try to be serious, you may look like a fool."

And, inevitably, Ensler's critics do focus on her involvement with celebrity. They also smirk at her eagerness to link all the world's ills together. A recent Ensler blog from India cited the situation of women in Palestine and Israel and Syria, "who have been fighting for peace and an end to occupation and violence. Women who report the terror of bombs landing around them and the tremors and explosions and loss of limbs and lives and hope."

She also bemoaned the impact of the storm that had flooded New York and the Caribbean. "I write in its aftermath, leaving neighbourhoods and houses and lives destroyed. I write as drought and fires and extreme and unusual temperatures rage across the planet."

She has been lambasted from within the feminist fold for allowing men to participate in a V-Men movement in spite of the fact that human history so far could be described as one long phallic monologue. Questionable, too, for some feminists is her focus on one female sexual organ when objectification is a substantial element of the problems women face.

Even Ensler's attitude to her recent cancer has also been controversial. Her diagnosis with the uterine variety has since been styled by her as "a cancer gift" that has strengthened her. For a while, during chemotherapy, she lost her trademark sleek, dark helmet of a haircut, but her positive attitude was undimmed. Her attitude to criticism from within the sisterhood remains disarming. "The older you get, the more you are aware that everybody has a certain way of seeing things, which they have to honour," she has said.

Clune defends Ensler from those who laugh at her 1970s brand of feminism. "Consciousness-raising might sound like knitting yoghurt now, but there is a real place for it because some women are still not clear about the issues. And what a brilliant day she has chosen: Valentine's Day, when the world is marking a romantic idea of femininity that has got nothing to do with reality for many women."

And at the core of Ensler's touchy-feely approach there is a detectable dark rigour. She has said she suspects a "suicidal" tendency deep in the human species, "and I think overcoming that is very difficult and the point of being here".