V-Day today
Eve Ensler’s internationally celebrated play, The Vagina Monologues, comes to Jamaica for the first time this week, when students of the University of the West Indies Mona will perform the controversial production at the Philip Sherlock Centre for the Performing Arts today, March 31, and again on April 7.
The play has been performed in countries around the world by celebrities such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Julia Roberts, and Barbara Streisand and has spawned the birth of V-day, an international movement designed to raise awareness of women’s issues like rape, incest, domestic battery and genital mutilation.
Through V-Day campaigns, local volunteers and college students produce annual benefit performances of “The Vagina Monologues” to change social attitudes towards violence against women, and to raise awareness and funds for anti-violence groups within their own communities.
In 2002, more than 800 V-Day benefit events were presented by local volunteer activists around the world, educating millions of people about the reality of violence against women and girls.
In Jamaica, all proceeds from the events will go towards implementing an anti-rape public awareness project, coordinated by the local non-profit organisation Women’s Media Watch.