Clark University Vagina Monologues will take place this weekend: Friday, February 16 and Saturday, February 17 at 7p.m. in Atwood.
The annual event, was written by Eve Ensler and co-directed by Lila Sorenson and Anny Ul-Ain.
“It’s very empowering to watch such inspirational strong women take on these roles,” Sorenson said.
Eve Ensler is a Tony Award winning playwright, performer, and activist, according to her website. She is the author of The Vagina Monologues, which is a play about consensual and nonconsensual sex, body image, and many other issues through the eyes of women. Ensler formed her play through interview with over 200 women of different backgrounds. It was first performed in 1996.
Photo credit: Lindsay Aikman/Michael Priest Photography
“When you rape, beat, maim, mutilate, burn, bury, and terrorize women, you destroy the essential life energy on the plant,” Ensler wrote in the Monologues.
The Vagina Monologues includes a bunch of female voices, including a six-year-old girl, a vagina workshop participant, and a feminist happy to have found a man who “liked to look at it.”
The New York Times said Ensler’s “collage of testimonials about the culture of silence surrounding sexual violence against women is probably the most important piece of political theater of the last decade, at least if we measure a play’s impact in quantifiable terms.”
The overall theme is women empowerment, and “beautiful, strong, and talented young women” will be performing Ensler’s work at Clark, according to the Clark University Vagina Monologue Facebook page.
“Slowly, it dawned on me that nothing was more important than stopping violence toward women—that the desecration of women indicated the failure of human beings to honor and protect life,” Ensler wrote.
Tickets are $3 in advance, $5 at the door, and may be reserved by emailing clarkvagmon@gmail.com. The money goes to Planned Parenthood.
But two lucky Her Campus Clark readers will be able to go for free. The rules are as follows: you must like the post on both our Facebook (Her Campus at Clark University) and Twitter (@HerCampusClark) page. If you comment your friend’s name too, you will have a better chance of winning.
In a time of movements such as #MeToo and Time’s Up Now, the Vagina Monologues are still relevant. It encourages body positivity, and it brings important topics to the surface. These things need to be talked about.
And you too can be part of the conversation when you see the performance this weekend.