Vagina Monologues

“I went to a very progressive high school, and they put the Vagina Monologues on every year,” First-year Ana Devlin Gauthier said. “My parents wouldn’t let me participate, though. They said, ‘Once you go away to college, go ahead.’”

When Gauthier found out that Alfred University’s Women’s Issues Coalition traditionally only teams up with the theater department to perform the monologues every other year, Gauthier decided she would take on the project.

“I think it’s something really important that really needs to be done every year,” she said.

Gauthier worked with Trisha Debertolis and Dan Napolitano, a few other dedicated students, and money from WIC’s budget to perform the monologues April 17 and 18 in the Knight Club.

Performances of Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues are part of the global movement begun by V-Day, which aims to end violence against women and girls. V-Day is a non-profit organization that distributes funds to national and international grassroots organizations that work to stop violence against women. To date, the V-Day movement has raised over $60 million and educated millions about violence against women and efforts to end it.

The monologues ranged from tales of self-discovery to accounts of brutal rape to a recollection of the awe inspired by childbirth. Vaginas and the women they belong to were given voice in the monologues—some of them angry, some of them hurt, some of them satisfied.

Although there was a lot of stress involved in the rehearsal process as people dropped out or switched around, and several kind people stepped in on the Wednesday before the show, the performance came together in the end.

As for her parent’s reaction to her decision to put on the monologues, Gauthier said, “They were actually glad in the end that I did it.”

Gauthier expressed her sincere gratitude to everyone who performed monologues and helped out in other ways.

“It was really impressive—they pulled it together so well,” Gauthier said.