UE Women’s Awareness to Perform “The Vagina Monologues”

To raise awareness of women’s issues and support a local nonprofit organization, members of the University of Evansville Women’s Awareness student organization will perform Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues next weekend.

Performances of Ensler’s critically acclaimed production will take place on Saturday, February 11 at 7:00 p.m. and Sunday, February 12 at 2:00 p.m. Both shows will take place in Eykamp Hall, Room 251 in the Ridgway University Center. Admission is $5 and open to the community.

Women’s Awareness will donate 90 percent of the proceeds from ticket sales, a silent art auction, and button and bracelet sales to the Albion Fellows Bacon Center, a shelter for local victims of domestic and sexual violence.

The other 10 percent of proceeds will benefit V-Day, a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls. Each year, V-Day distributes funds to its Spotlight Campaign, which focuses on a particular group of women with the goal of raising awareness and funds to put a worldwide media spotlight on this area and to aid groups on the ground that are addressing it.

This year, the organization is spotlighting the increased rates of sexual violence against women and girls in Haiti since the devastating earthquake in January 2010. This year’s productions of The Vagina Monologues will include a new monologue written by Ensler, titled “For My Sisters in Portauprincebukavuneworleans.” The monologue is dedicated to the women of Haiti as well as the women of the last two spotlight areas, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and New Orleans.

Based on interviews that V-Day founder/playwright Eve Ensler conducted with more than 200 women, The Vagina Monologues celebrates women’s sexuality and strength. The award-winning play ran off-Broadway for five years in New York and then toured the United States. Now, activists across the world perform the monologues to heighten community awareness of women’s issues and raise money for local organizations working to end violence against girls and women.

In 2011, The Vagina Monologues was performed more than 3,500 times worldwide. The University of Evansville’s production last year raised more than $1,200 for the Albion Fellows Bacon Center and V-Day.

For more information on the monologues and the V-Day movement, please visit www.vday.org.

Source: Evansville.edu