EMail This Page - Print

Julie Engler

Pulse Reporter

www.vday.org

Vagina Monologues:

Tickets are $10.00 for adults and $5.00 for students. For more information,

contact Women's Studies at (618) 453-5141.

Friday: 7:30 p.m.

Saturday: 7:30 p.m.

Sunday: 2:30 p.m.

All proceeds go to the Women's Center, 610 S. Thompson St., Carbondale, Ill.

It's that time again, the time to celebrate womanhood with this year's installment of the Vagina Monologues. Why not kick it off with Vulva-Pa-Looza?

Unfortunately, if you missed it, you missed the chance to win an "I Love Vagina" T-shirt and a vagina pillow as well. You can always try your luck next year, or, better yet, attend the Vagina Monologues this weekend in Furr Auditorium of Pulliam Hall.

The Vagina Monologues are performed every year by students in the Theater Department on campus to promote V-Day, a campaign that raises awareness about violent acts against women, such as rape, abuse and genital mutilation. The movement is not local: Thousands of groups around the world perform the Vagina Monologues on or around V-Day [designated on Valentines' Day].

This year's campaign, "Justice to Comfort Women," is an organized effort to expose the forcing of women into sexual slavery in Japan during [World War II]. According to the Web site, hundreds of organizations have joined these women's efforts in receiving an apology, and also in part brings to mind the current war situation that might put women in the same situation as them.

The Vagina Monologues joins this effort by performing at college campuses across the nation on a yearly basis. The first V-Day campaign was launched in 1998.

The name of the event can be intimidating for men and even some women, said Maureen Conway, who is a senior from Aurora and also the organizer of the Vagina Monologues.

"Everyone thinks it's men bashing," Conway said. The Vagina Monologues takes true stories that were told to Eve Ensler, the lady who started the V-Day campaign, and retells the accounts of experiences about everything from a woman learning to love her vagina to accounts of rape. By exposing the issues at the core, the stories have the power to open men's and women's eyes to the problems women face on a daily basis, Conway said.

"People aren't aware of all the stuff that's going on," Conway said. "If people don't know what's going on, it's never going to stop."

This year's performance features new skits from previous years, such as one about the magic of childbirth as seen through a woman's eyes, and one called "Say It," which is about a woman turning an offensive word into grandeur.

Director Patricia Pfeiffer, an SIUC December graduate, is performing the monologue on giving birth in this year's performance. She said that while all of the monologues speak to women in all sorts of positive ways, the monologue truly is delivered from the heart because she is pregnant.

"All of the monologues are within every woman," Pfeiffer said. "The vagina is not only an organ, but a piece of womanhood."