Reclaiming Peace

Friday 9 February 2007

This year’s UNA production of The Vagina Monologues was, once again, a powerful, hilarious, unsettling, and heart-breaking experience. Even more so, for me, as several past and present students performed: Katie Brown, Emma Schartner, Keri Massa, Irum Javed, Sara Wall, Liz Toecker, and Megan Heeney, all under the wise and steady directoring of Rachel Buckler.

Jeni Poell took my Social Justice class in fall 2001 and that November went to a workshop in Boston with Eve Ensler on how to do a production of the monologues. Shortly thereafter, she and other students organized the first performance of The Vagina Monologues on SLU’s campus in time for Valentine’s Day, 2002. Jeni, Cassie Selby and the others involved in that first production would be proud to see these young women carry on this important work of raising awareness about the experiences of women in our lives and around the world. Funds raised from this weekend’s performances benefit the local Women’s Safe House and Karen House.

Kerri Massa wrote, “I monologue because I believe in the strength women possess–both individually and as a whole. I’m tired of people putting females down, or trying to ‘shush’ us. I also monologue because of the causes it supports–Karen House and Women’s Safe House tie in perfectly to what we’re trying to do this year–help our strong women become even stronger and RECLAIM PEACE for each and every woman, man, and child.”

And so these young women engage in those ancient yet ever timely prophetic tasks: afflicting the comfortable, and comforting the afflicted.