The Vagina Monologues at The University of North Texas
Mahalia Agyepong, Jay Menai, Lena Glover, Sherry Bogue, Erin Jordan, and Alex Lombard on stage during UNT's 16th annual production of The Vagina Monologues. Photo by Amelia McBride.
Vaginas, vaginas everywhere. Vaginas as far as the eye can see.
The fifteenth annual UNT production of The Vagina Monologues took place this weekend at the University of North Texas, thanks in part to sponsorship from the UNT Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance.
The student-led production of The Vagina Monologues was held at 7:30 pm on Friday, February 26th and Saturday, February 27th in the UNT Lyceum located inside the University Union.
The Vagina Monologues sparked the V-Day movement, an international event held from February 1st to April 30th. Thousands of communities, colleges, and organizations worldwide put on benefit productions of this play and host similar events in order to raise funds for local charities that focus on providing aid and education for women.
This movement also seeks to benefit rape crisis centers and shelters for women while bringing attention to and providing education of sexual violence to the community at large.
Prior to putting on Eve Ensler’s politically and socially significant 1996 play, UNT students hosted a Vagina Fair, where student-made arts and crafts were sold. Fun, lighthearted items like bedazzled felt labia, “pussy” BIC lighters, The Vagina Monologues t-shirts, and picture frames filled with quotes like “Fight Me” covered one side of the hall while handmade ceramic vagina necklaces and acrylic paintings of body-positive quotes and images covered the other.
Guests had their pick of a wide array of trinkets, paperweights, magnets, posters, and cards. The profits from both the $10 ticket sales and the different items sold at the Vagina Fair will benefit the Mosaic Family Services as well as The Family Place, two Denton organizations that aid victims of domestic violence and work to educate survivors about sexual abuse while building an independent, safe future for themselves.
Alexis Salas, Nash Bayoud, and Tiffany Stenger strike a pose. Photo by Amelia McBride
One of the stars of the Vagina Fair was the cleverly named “#SnatchChat” photo op, modelled after the popular social networking app, SnapChat. Audience members could take a selfie with a cast member dressed like an actual vagina: UNT pupil Nash Bayoud, who ingeniously used a pink infinity scarf to simulate a labia.
For those unfamiliar with The Vagina Monologues, this production focuses on the lives of a diverse group of women on an international scale. The Vagina Monologues features interviews with women of different social, economic, ethnic, and national backgrounds to create a dimensional view of the struggles and joys of the female sexual experience. Sensitive, emotional topics such as molestation, sexual abuse, transphobia, and genital mutilation are brought up and discussed in some monologues while empowering, uplifting, and sometimes hilarious topics like sexual and self-discovery, body acceptance, and romance (or lack thereof) were illustrated in others.
Cast members presented international facts and figures relating to each monologue, creating a statistical, real-world view of the mass scale of these varying issues. The UNT actresses featured in this play presented these interviews with harrowing, emotional performances and created a conversational element, often turning to the audience members for verbal responses. The personal attachment to each monologue by the actresses was clear, and the amount of passion for the pieces presented showed.
It’s safe to say that this weekend marked a very sweet fifteen for the UNT production of The Vagina Monologues.
For more information about The Vagina Monologues, Mosaic Family Services, and The Family Place, please visit them online here:
