By Tiffany Edwards , University Relations
In the last few years, "The Vagina Monologues" has become somewhat of a woman’s bible, a testament to the very nature of what it means to be female. Written by Eve Ensler, Obie Award-winning playwright who began V-Day: Stop Violence Against Women in 1997, "The Vagina Monologues" has become a staple for V-Day awareness.
Faculty, staff and students at UNCG will help increase this awareness by presenting performances of "The Vagina Monologues" Friday, Feb. 10, at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday, Feb. 11, at 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. The play will be performed in Elliott University Center auditorium. Although the event is free, a donation of $5 is suggested and all donations will go to the Clara House.
Sponsored by the Women’s and Gender Studies Program, the event is being produced by student Stephanie Barnes and assistant Sabrina Boyer, and directed by theatre student Glenn Weyler.
“As I traveled with the piece to city after city, country after country, hundreds of women waited after the show to talk to me about their lives,” Ensler says. “The play had somehow freed up their memories, pain, and desire. Night after night I heard the same stories -- women being raped as teenagers, in college, as little girls, as elderly women; women who had finally escaped bring beaten to death by their husbands; women who were terrified to leave; women who were taken sexually, before they were even conscious of sex, by their stepfathers, brothers, cousins, uncles, mothers and fathers.... Slowly it dawned on me that nothing was more important than stopping violence toward women.”
This realization led to the founding of V-Day, a nonprofit grass roots movement dedicated to ending violence against women around the world. In three years, V-Day has spread to 20 countries and to more than 300 colleges, where students and faculty have performed "The Vagina Monologues" on V-Day, Feb. 14. V-Day has raised more than $3 million, which it has given to organizations fighting for the rights of women in Afghanistan, to stop genital mutilation in Kenya, and to rape crisis centers in Bosnia, Croatia, and Chechnya, as well as hundreds of domestic programs.
For more information, contact the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at 334-5673 or Carole Lindsey-Potter at cllindse@uncg.edu.
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