On March 25-27 Mountain Community women are going to war. They ask you to join them. Their weapons are humor, honesty and resilience. Their enemy is a rising tide of violence against the hearts, spirits and bodies of women and children, a secret worldwide culture of sexual and domestic abuse. Pine Mountain’s Diane Duquette will share the stage. –Editor

By Diane Duquette

Playwright Eve Ensler conceived her powerful performance of The Vagina Monologues to support a cause no woman— and no parent—can afford to ignore. It opened off-Broadway and was produced for cable by HBO, played in London and then performed professionally around the world.

Twelve years ago Ensler helped launch V-Day, a global nonprofit that is reported to have raised over $50 million for women’s anti-violence groups. Benefit performances are held each February and March to raise funds for local groups, shelters and crisis centers working to end violence against women.

Now that I have seen the play at the Empty Space Theatre in Bakersfield and read the background of V-Day (with the motto: Until the Violence Stops), I see that this local production (opening on Thursday, March 25 in Pine Mountain, with three performances in Frazier Park March 26-27) seeks to end violence against women and girls. The most important reason to participate is to raise the consciousness of the Mountain Communities to the plight of those affected by this kind of violence locally. V-Day events encourage women and girls to share their experiences, to help them heal and to elicit change in their lives and in their community.

This is part of the March 19, 2010 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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