V-Day Talkbacks Announced at Abingdon's Production of Eve Ensler's FRUIT TRILOGY

V-Day, founded by author, playwright and activist Eve Ensler, presents the V-Day Talkbacks following select performances during Abingdon Theatre Company's New York premiere engagement of Ensler's Fruit Trilogy. The series, will feature activists, artists, and thinkers leading discussions surrounding the play's central themes on the commodification and ownership of women's bodies along with returning to and learning to love the body. Fruit Trilogy is a play that speaks to these explosive times and charts the journey of women, from the disembodiment that comes from violence to the embodiment that comes from self-love.

Talkbacks scheduled to date include:

Tuesday, June 12: Kiersey Clemons, film/tv/theater actor and one of the stars of Fruit Trilogy, on her role in the play, art and activism.

Wednesday, June 13: Liz Mikel, film/TV/theater actor, singer and one of the stars of Fruit Trilogy, on her role in the play, art and activism.

Thursday, June 14: Taina Bien-Aimé, Executive Director of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, moderates a conversation with representatives from Sanctuary and GEMS, all leaders on the front lines in the fight to end sex trafficking, and who serve and support survivors every day.

Tuesday, June 19: Khaliah Ali, positive body image speaker and activist, and Regena Thomashauer, teacher and author and founder ofMama Gena's School of Womanly Arts, on the themes of the body, ownership, and of loving one's body raised in the play.

Wednesday, June 20: Jennifer Buffett, Novo Foundation Co-President and V-Day Board Member, and Eve Ensler, Playwright (The Vagina Monologues, Fruit Trilogy) and Founder of V-Day and One Billion Rising.

Thursday, June 21: Participants to be announced.

abingdontheatre.org

Twenty years ago, Eve Ensler's play The Vagina Monologues gave birth to V-Day, a global activist movement to end violence against all women and girls (cisgender, transgender, and gender non-conforming). Since 1998, The Vagina Monologues and other works have been performed across the world by local V-Day activists, raising over $100 million dollars for grassroots anti-violence groups, rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, and safe houses in places like Kenya and Afghanistan. V-Day supports and launched the City of Joy, a revolutionary center for women survivors of gender violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has graduated over 1000 women leaders. Activists look at the intersection of class, race, gender, environmental destruction, imperialism, militarism, patriarchy, poverty, and war, as women face abuse and exploitation across layers of systematic and societal oppression, with the most marginalized and excluded often facing increased levels of violence. In 2013, V-Day gave birth to One Billion Rising - the largest mass action to demand an end to violence against women in history. V-Day and One Billion Rising are a crucial part of the global fight to stop gender-based violence through attacking the silence - public and private - that allows violence against women to continue. With ingenuity and determination, V-Day activists around the world are tirelessly working to end harassment, rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation and sex slavery.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride / WM Photos

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