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V-Day invites members of any community or high school around the world to present benefit productions of select artistic works in their city/town/province/high school each year on V-Day (February 14th) or the surrounding designated months.
This coming year (2009) we are allowing events to begin on February 1st and run through April 30th. The purpose of these events is to raise awareness about violence against women and girls as well as raise money for local beneficiaries that are working to end violence. You must plan to present your events in a community rental space and anyone is eligible to organize a V-Day event. There is no theater experience necessary.
2009 is V-Day’s eleventh year and we are offering more creative vehicles than ever before. Below are all the ways in which you can bring a V-Day event to your community in 2009.
And there are many, many more ideas that our organizers have shared with us on the organizer website once you have signed up!
1. The Vagina Monologues has been produced in thousands of colleges, universities, cities, towns and high schools since 1998, with unrivaled success. These events have been responsible for raising millions of dollars for local charities over the last 10 years.
The award-winning play is based on V-Day Founder/playwright Eve Ensler's interviews with more than 200 women. With humor and grace the piece celebrates women’s sexuality and strength. Through this play and the liberation of this one word, countless women throughout the world have taken control of their bodies and their lives. For more than twelve years, The Vagina Monologues has given voice to experiences and feelings not previously exposed in public.
2. A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant and A Prayer: Writings To Stop Violence Against Women and Girls, is a groundbreaking collection of monologues by world-renowned authors and playwrights, edited by Eve Ensler and Mollie Doyle.
These diverse voices rise up in a collective roar to break open, expose, and examine the insidiousness of violence at all levels: brutality, neglect, a punch, even a put-down.
The volume features such authors and topics as: Edward Albee on S&M; Maya Angelou on women's work; Michael Cunningham on self-mutilation; Dave Eggers on a Sudanese abduction; Edwidge Danticat on a border crossing; Carol Gilligan on a daughter witnessing her mother being hit; Susan Miller on raising a son as a single mother; Sharon Olds on a bra; Patricia Bosworth on her own physically abusive relationship; Jane Fonda on reclaiming our Mojo; and many more.
It is available for you to present as a reading, and includes pieces by and for men. We encourage men to register to host readings in conjunction with other V-Day activities.
3. Until the Violence Stops is an uplifting documentary that looks at the V-Day movement and the work we have done around the world. It is an inspiring introduction to V-Day for your friends and community.
Until The Violence Stops features playwright and activist Eve Ensler in a powerful film that documents how The Vagina Monologues grew into the international grassroots movement stopping violence against women and girls - V-Day. In 2002, eight hundred cities around the world participated in V-Day by staging benefit performances of The Vagina Monologues. Until the Violence Stops shows women from Harlem, New York to Ukiah, California; from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to the Philippines and Kenya, uniting and courageously revealing their intimate and deeply painful experiences with abuse ranging from rape to female circumcision.
4. Any One of Us: Words From Prison evolved from a decade long writing group with Eve Ensler and 15 women at Bedford Hill’s Correctional Facility. This piece is a collection of stories from the raw voices of fierceness and honesty written by the original 15 women combined with writing from women in prisons across the nation moving forward toward healing, understanding, and change with the ultimate goal of using their writing and voices to impact policy, laws and treatment of incarcerated women. Together these writings reveal the deep connection between women in prison and the violence that often brings them there.
5. What I Want My Words to Do to You offers an unprecedented look into the minds and hearts of the women inmates of New York's Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. The film goes inside a writing workshop led by playwright and activist Eve Ensler, consisting of 15 women, most of whom were convicted of murder. Through a series of exercises and discussions, the women delve into their pasts and explore the nature of their crimes and the extent of their own culpability. The film culminates in an emotionally charged prison performance of the women's writing (the first edition of “Any One of Us”) by acclaimed actors Mary Alice, Glenn Close, Hazelle Goodman, Rosie Perez and Marisa Tomei. The film documents both the wrenching personal journeys undertaken by the inmates to find the words that tell their own stories, and the power of those words to move the outside world.
If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact us at campaign at vday dot org.
Sign Up to Organize a V-Day Event Now >
2009 event registration will begin in the fall of 2008. Please sign up for V-Day's newsletter, V-Mail to receive updates on the launch of the 2009 V-Season.-->