Carleton College will host a student produced and performed production of Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” on Sunday, April 6 at 7:30 p.m. in the Concert Hall. Sometimes funny, sometimes poignant—“The Vagina Monologues” focuses on the female experience as it relates to sexuality, love, abuse, and resilience. Proceeds from this event will benefit The HOPE Center in Faribault, along with the national V-Day Spotlight Campaign, a global movement to end violence against women and girls.
Tickets are being offered on a $5 to $15 sliding scale, and can be purchased at the door and online at apps.carleton.edu/campus/gsc/vagmons/creditcard/.
First performed in 1994, playwright and activist Eve Ensler’s groundbreaking play, “The Vagina Monologues,” was based on dozens of interviews Ensler conducted with women, addressing women's sexuality and the social stigma surrounding rape and abuse. The result was a new conversation about and with women.
“The Vagina Monologues” ran Off-Broadway for five years in New York and then toured the United States. After every performance, Ensler found women waiting to share their own stories of survival, leading her to realize that “The Vagina Monologues” could be more than a moving work of art on violence; she divined that the performances could be a mechanism for moving people to act to end violence.
On Valentines Day, 1998, Ensler, with a group of women in New York City, established V-Day. Set up as a 501(c)(3) and originally staffed by volunteers, the organization's seed money came from a star-studded, sold out benefit performance at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York, a show that raised $250,000 in a single evening. In support of V-Day, “The Vagina Monologues” are performed nationally each year to help support the mission of V-Day.
V-Day's mission is simple. It demands that violence against women and girls must end. To do this, once a year, in February, March, and April, Ensler allows groups around the world to produce a performance of the play, as well as other works created by V-Day, and use the proceeds for local individual projects and programs that work to end violence against women and girls, often shelters and rape crisis centers. What began as one event in New York City in 1998 today includes over 5,800 V-Day events each year.
More information about this year's Spotlight campaign can be found at www.vday.org.
The Hope Center works against sexual and domestic violence through crisis intervention, counseling, and legal advocacy. Through innovative programming, they offer direct support to victims of violence in Rice County, collaborative support to other organizations that serve victims, and educational support to the entire community. For more information, visit hopecentermn.org.
This event is sponsored by the Carleton College Gender & Sexuality Center. For more information, including disability accommodations, please call (507) 222-7179. Please note, this performance contains mature themes and stories about sexual violence. The Concert Hall is located on First Street, between Nevada and Winona Streets, in Northfield.
