The night of Friday Feb. 17 La Crosse’s shelter and outreach center, New Horizons, presented the episodic play: The Vagina Monologues at The Cavalier Theater. New Horizons provides services to those who have fallen victim to domestic or sexual abuse.

The play was put on in honor of V-Day, a global movement to end violence towards females. V-Day was founded by Vagina Monologues’ playwright, Eve Ensler. According to the playbill, Ensler’s work with this organization has raised over 100 million dollars to end violence. 10% of tonight’s proceeds are being donated to the V-Day campaign; the other 90% going to New Horizons.

Worker for New Horizon, Victoria Carson, explained that it is a great place to volunteer. For more information on how to get involved, visit: http://www.nhagainstabuse.org/get-involved/ .

The Vagina Monologues aims to discuss many struggles and beauties of being a woman. Some skit topics involved: discrimination towards transgenders, the controversy with dress codes requiring women to “cover-up”, sex working, rape during the Bosnia War, creating friendly connotations for “vagina” slang-words, etc.

Two notable actresses in this play were UW-L theater majors: freshman, Corinne Kessler, and junior, Caitlyn Nettesheim.

In the crowd, UW-L student, Lauren Lannigan, was sure the show would “be great no matter what, especially since [what the show covers] is such a controversial topic right now.” And despite an unexpected call for an ambulance to help a woman in the crowd, the show went on.

Each year, the play is modified to stay up-to-date with current issues.  This year’s “spotlight issue” was harassment in the workplace. The show ended with a statement by a Festival Foods worker who had been harassed here in the La Crosse community.

Post-show, UW-L alumni Colleen Sovey shared her hopeful visions for the feminist experience, “The monologues evoked so many different emotions from the crowd and I really hope more organizations take this play on.”

The show concluded with a special thanks given to the UW-L Violence Prevention Office as well as Joe Anderson, Chair of Department of Theatre Arts at the University.