This 'V-Day' reading to benefit resource centre

NEWS RELEASE

LAKE SUPERIOR
STATE UNIVERSITY

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University women to present benefit reading

SAULT STE. MARIE, MI - The American Association of University Women invites the public to a benefit reading of Eve Ensler's Obie Award-winning play, The Vagina Monologues, at 8 p.m. Friday, February 21, and at 2 p.m. on Sunday, February 22, in the Shouldice Library auditorium, room 278.

Proceeds raised from reading will go to the Sault Ste. Marie Diane Peppler Resource Center.

The Vagina Monologues has been performed in cities across America and at hundreds of college campuses.

It inspired a dynamic grassroots movement, 'V-Day,' on or around February 14, to stop violence against women.

Described as witty and irreverent, compassionate and wise, the play gives voice to women's deepest fantasies and fears.

The Chicago Tribune called the show, "frank, humorous and moving…" while Variety wrote, "Written with a bluntness that is nevertheless intensely lyrical, it is both a work of art and an incisive piece of cultural history, a poem and a polemic, a performance and a balm and a benediction."

This isn't LSSU's first presentation of Monologues.

Jillian Spalo, a senior from Ortonville, Michigan, directed an April 2003 production in the Studio Theatre, located in the basement of Brady Hall, before the Art Center's opening.

Elizabeth Sippl, who was a senior majoring in elementary education and president of the Lake State Theater Company and Drama Club, directed a production not quite three years later, in February 2006, which featured LSSU students as well as members from the surrounding community.

Proceeds from both productions went to the Sault Ste. Marie Housing Commission’s Tri-County Safe Haven.

For more information about this year’s production, write Dr. Melissa Shaffer-O'Connell, [email protected], or Deanna Riggs, [email protected].

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(PHOTO: The cast of Lake Superior State University’s 2006 production of Vagina Monologues assemble for this overhead view. LSSU/John Shibley)

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