Pitt Vagina Monologues to debut Thursday

During the Bosnian war, an estimated 50,000 women were raped — that’s about triple of… During the Bosnian war, an estimated 50,000 women were raped — that’s about triple of Pitt’s undergrad population.

But one undergraduate, senior Gabby Grosso, will tell those women’s tragedies during this year’s Vagina Monologues. Her monologue, “My Vagina Was My Village,” is based on Bosnian women in refugee camps.

Despite the somber topic, she said she has enjoyed preparing for the event. “It’s very laid back — we have fun,” Grosso said during Wednesday’s night dress rehearsal.

Grosso is one of 16 students starring in this weekend’s prodction of the Vagina Monologues, a show put on by the Campus Women’s Organization each year around Valentine’s Day. The Vagina Monologues is an international show written by playwright, performer and activist Eve Ensler. The show consists of a series of monologues based on interviews with hundreds of women of various backgrounds, ages, races and sexual orientations. And the content revolves around one thing: the vagina.

The Vagina Monologues are part of V-Day, an activist movement striving to stop violence against women around the world.

Juniors and CWO members Bella Salamone and Julie Anne Evans co-directed Pitt’s production, which debuts tonight at 7:30 p.m. in Alumni Hall.

“The V-Day organization’s purpose is fighting sexual and domestic violence worldwide. There’s an empowering element [to the show],” Salamone said.

Going in stride with V-Day’s purpose, 10 percent of the funds from Vagina Monologues performances worldwide will be donated to supporting the women of Haiti.

“Ninety percent of women in refugee camps in Haiti have lives touched by sexual violence,” Salamone said.

Pitt’s CWO will donate the other 90 percent of its ticket sale earnings to Planned Parenthood.

Salamone said that auditions for the show began in the first week of December, and the women chosen have been practicing once a week since Jan. 6.

In previous years, graduate students and women around the Pittsburgh community have also participated, but this year, Salamone said Pitt students are playing most of the roles.

“This year, it’s pretty in-house,” Salamone said, “but [the Monologues] are about the Pittsburgh community, not just about Pittsburgh the school.”

The monologues cover topics ranging from Grosso’s depiction of Bosnian women in refugee camps to women’s liberation and personal sexual arousal, pride and confidence.

The penultimate monologue, performed by junior Teresa Qiu, focuses on birth.

Qiu said that while labor involves agony and struggling, “it’s also about new life coming out of the womb. It’s uplifting — [the] pain of celebration.”

Other dialogues, such as senior Jade Coley’s, blend tragedy and triumph. Coley, a natural sciences major, speaks on the discovery of sexual pleasure after the trauma of sexual assault.

Coley said her monologue shows the vagina can be part of “a positive experience — not a terrible place of doom.”

As co-director Evans said, “The Vagina Monologues allows an uninhibited and shameless way to talk about gender and say ‘vagina’ on stage.”