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“V week” preps for Vagina Monologues this weekend

The annual Vagina Monologues performance will take place this weekend, and fundraisers this past week have led up to the show.

Vagina Monologues Director senior Ariel Hartman said this event has been very successful in the past. Bradley raised about $3,000 for charities last year.

“This is not a show about hating men,” Hartman said. “It’s about real women that get hurt [and] have questions.”

Unlike other theatre performances where the money goes to Bradley’s theatre, all of the money raised goes to two different organizations.

One charity is a multimillion-dollar campaign called the V Day Foundation, which this year will donate the money schools raise to Haiti to support any families that may need help recovering from events in recent years.

Half of the proceeds will also go to the Center for the Prevention of Abuse.

Several drives throughout the week have led up to the performance. These included “These hands don’t hurt,” where students traced their hands on a piece of paper vowing not to abuse someone, and the “Skip a meal” program, where students opted to swipe their ID card at the cafeterias an extra time to donate to charities.

The participants sold bracelets and “Pussy-pops,” or flavored lollipops, throughout the week as well.

In addition to the fundraisers during “V” week, the Vagina Monologues participants also raised money outside of Bradley’s campus, such as canning at local grocery stores last weekend.

Hartman also said the audience should expect honesty and women telling the truth about issues that affect women every day, and that it is not a passive event.

The Vagina Monologues is not just a Bradley program, but a nationwide event.

“The smaller campus makes it a great event to get so many people together,” senior English major Ivee Brown said. “It makes it feel more personal.”

Brown, a member of the cast, has attended Vagina Monologue performances at other college campuses, including University of Illinois Champaign/Urbana.

Junior family and consumer science major Melanie McDevitt has seen Bradley’s performance in the past and decided to be a part of the program this year.

McDevitt said her character is more humorous than Brown’s role. In the Vagina Monologues, McDevitt plays the “woman who loved to make vaginas happy,” also called the “Moaner.”

“It is a definite emotional roller coaster,” McDevitt said. “I expect to see some laughing, some crying and some anxiousness.”

The Vagina Monologues performance will be 7 p.m. tonight and tomorrow in the Student Center Ballroom. Tickets for the show are five dollars each.

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