The Vagina Monologues, the groundbreaking Obie Award-winning play featuring women's experiences, performed by women, and produced on hundreds of college campuses worldwide to help end violence against women and girls, is coming to West Michigan.
Grand Valley State University will feature two productions of the play:
- Wednesday, February 13 at the Louis Armstrong Theatre, Performing
Arts Center, Allendale Campus
- Saturday, February 16 at Wealthy Theatre, 1130 Wealthy St. SE in Grand Rapids.
The Vagina Monologues is a series of separate scenes acted by one or more women. It has been hailed as a bona fide phenomenon (The New York Times), alternately funny, poetic and provocative (Entertainment Weekly), and marvelous, one of the best shows in town (Daily News). The script is based on playwright Eve Ensler's interviews with hundreds of women from diverse backgrounds and her unabashed exploration of questions often pondered but seldom asked. The resulting play reveals the answers and, with them, portrays the humor, pain, power, wisdom and outrage buried in women's experiences.
Grand Valley's student-run production involves more than 50 GVSU students, faculty and staff, and members of the local community. It is comprised of 14 scenes intertwined with spoken interviews and facts.
Since playwright Ensler first performed the The Vagina Monologues in 1996, it has toured the U.S. and abroad with critically acclaimed performances in Jerusalem, Berlin, Athens, Zagreb, and a hit run in London. In 1998 The Vagina Monologues was published in book form with a foreword by Gloria Steinem by Villard Books/Random House.
The play is now being produced around the world to mark V-Day -- an international movement to stop violence against women and girls and to proclaim Valentine's Day as the time to celebrate women and demand an end to abuse. The annual event was inspired by the first world V-Day in 1998, which featured a performance of The Vagina Monologues by such celebrities as Glenn Close, Whoopi Goldberg, Susan Sarandon, Winona Ryder, and Calista Flockhart. Last year's event included a wildly successful performance by 70 high-profile women at New York City's Madison Square Garden. A special V-Day edition of the play was also released last year.
This year Grand Valley joins more than 500 colleges and universities worldwide presenting The Vagina Monologues between February 8 and March 8 as a benefit for the V-Day College Campaign. An additional 245 communities are also staging the show. For more information on the V-Day Campaign or statistics on the problem of violence against women and girls, see www.vday.org.
Grand Valley's production is sponsored by the Nokomis Foundation, FORGE (Focus On Rethinking Gender Education) student group, the GVSU Women's Center, and GVSU School of Communications. Proceeds will go to the YWCA Sexual Assault Program of Grand Rapids, the GVSU Women's Center, and RAWA (supporting Afghan women).
There will be an accompanying art exhibit February 12-16 at Gallery 222, 222 S. Division Ave., featuring artwork by women faculty, staff, and students at GVSU. For exhibition hours call 458-5933.
