Intelligent people agree: This culture needs to think about itself like Rome needed to check its lead content (incidentally, it wasn't actually lead that destroyed Rome, but it did have something to do with a defunct social system that bears a striking resemblance to our own).

A chic way to think about culture is to produce a play about gender or race, and there's a reason it's chic -- the reason is nobody thinks about gender or race nearly enough.

MATT GENTRY | The Roanoke Times Ashley Sparks leads her cast in stretching exercises before rehersals of 'A Traveling Menstrual Show begin.

If you're shaking your head, take a look at the cleavage-filled magazine rack at 7-Eleven. Then go watch that Milwaukee's Best beer commercial where giant cans of beer hurdle from the heavens to kill sensitive men -- men who like cats or care about their wives.

And speaking of bodies and our psychological relationship to them, there's a new gender play in town: the Virginia Tech workshop production of "A Traveling Menstrual Show," written and directed by Ashley Sparks.

Sparks is a second-year graduate student at Virginia Tech in the masters of fine art in directing and public dialogue in theater arts program.

The production is being performed in several different buildings, requiring audience members to relocate three times during a single performance. This is unusual, but even more unusual is that audiences will actually have something to think about when they leave the theater, Sparks hopes.

Here, Sparks takes some time to talk about her production, which will relay moments of personal or social experience as a way of opening up a dialogue about the body and about how it relates to our sense of self.

What exactly is the 'traveling' part of 'A Traveling Menstrual Show'?

Ashley Sparks: It starts out in the Performing Arts Building 204, but even when people first enter the lobby there's an installation -- there's a lot of components that are more installation than traditional set. ... there'll be a couple of interactive visual art elements. ... So the audience starts there.

What's going on with the production there?

AS: There are a series of different events introducing basic biology of menstruation, some ritual aspects ... and some of the mythology behind menstruation, like a young woman at the beach being attacked by sharks. ... There's an introduction to the main character, Eva, and her relationship with the moon. ... There's a myth in the Philippines or New Zealand, I can't remember which, that when a woman starts her period it's because the moon comes and makes love to her.

That's been a really striking image to me, and one of the closing pieces is an exploration of that moment and that transition of her entering womanhood and that seduction. ... But after the opening, the audience is divided into small groups and each actor takes five to six audience members to one of two sites. ... Each site deals with a different chronology of a woman's life span.

The Durham Hall stuff deals with birth and menopause; the Major Williams stuff deals with the maiden years of first getting your period and celebratory things about it and birth control. ... And then they all come back to 204, and at that point the space has been completely reconfigured.

The themes in this production are important to explore. Trying to explore these themes in regular life just seems to annoy my friends, but I think about, for example, the difference in the way people react to a woman if she's carrying a baby. She's defined as being a mother or a wife and suddenly there is this problematic different level of respect for her because she's maternal or 'belongs' to someone else.

AS: I think a lot of the piece for me has been an exploration of what is hidden and what is exposed. Why we choose to hide things, and when it's a choice and when it's not; when it's circumstances or outside forces that work on us that we choose not to talk about. ... There's this really great quote: 'To lose confidence in one's body is to lose confidence in one's self.' How do we as women relate to our bodies, to push the boundary on that?

That quote sets up the question, 'How does the body define our sense of self? And for a lot of men, I think a related question is, 'Why does this have to be a gender issue? or specifically, 'Why do women define themselves through their bodies? in something like this production or in say 'The Vagina Monologues.' A lot of men don't think about how much our culture links women with their bodies and how much it actually discourages men from doing the same.

AS: And women's bodies are keeping time in a way that men's bodies don't necessarily do. While men do keep time in a similar way, there isn't this monthly reminder.

What was involved in bringing this project to the stage?

AS: I started writing last January. I started out doing story circles with women and men, probably 10 in all with different ages, facilitating a discussion about their relationship with menstruation. ... Also doing lots of research on the topic, reading books, Web research, historical myths, folk, medical. ... So the development of the script was a combination of the story circles, the research and these composition assignments ... four or five assignments in different locations, creating mini-performance events ... based on the work of Anne Bogart, the director. ... So it ends up being a combination of stories from the community, my personal stories, the stories that I found through research, myth and what the actors bring to it.

So you're starting off with a structure and then integrating all these other elements?

AS: Yeah, I tell the actors that at this point I'm really serving as an editor.

One of the really interesting things about this production is that by making it a traveling show, you're forcing the audience to become an active part of the production, to walk through campus in a big group whether they like it or not. It almost places them in an awareness march.

AS: You're no longer sitting in the safe confines of a black box. You're very much an active part. ... Part of it for me is about the audience going on that physical journey. ... I'm not interested in theater being fake ... the audience sits in the dark, and the actors do their thing and you have your experience, and then you go home at the end of the night and you may or may not discuss it with your partner or whoever. What is it to ask the audience to become a very active part of the journey with the actors? The audience becomes a part of the show ...they can't just be like, 'I'm gonna sit in this dark space and nobody will ever know that I came to see this thing about bleeding.'

Who are your influences?

1. Dah Theatre, Serbian theater company

2. Ida Applebrog, feminist visual artist

3. Richard Armstrong, NYU voice teacher

4. Ann Bogart, SITI Company artistic director

"A Traveling Menstrual Show" will be performed at 8 p.m. Tuesday through Nov. 17, beginning and ending in the Virginia Tech Performing Arts Building 204. Each night will feature a different post-show discussion. A donation of $5 is suggested to support the Clothesline Project and Planned Parenthood.