BY GRACE CASSUTTO // A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant, and A Prayer was performed by a group of 11 Hood College
students this Friday February 21 and Saturday February 22.

The performance was sponsored by the college’s Equal Sex organization as a part of  its  V-Day events. According to the show’s program, “V-Day is a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls that raises funds and awareness through benefit productions.”

Laura Hanna, a junior and a V-Day coordinator, explained “Equal Sex does a production every year – last year was The Vagina Monologues.” Hanna lamented over the cancellation of the V-Day event that was meant to take place on February 14 saying, “I’m disappointed that we couldn’t have V-Day because of the snow, but I’m excited for people to see [A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant, and A Prayer]. Some of the monologues are really powerful.”

The show was comprised of 11 performances by Hood students, covering a range of topics including rape, sexual assault, familial relationships, self-image, and intersectionality. Some monologues, such as “Rescue,” performed by sophomore Joe Denicola, were heavy pieces that brought a hush over the audience.

“My baby sister, Belle, in hysterics at 10, crying to me that the neighbor whose child she babysat had been touching her in the bad place, wrong, and me confronting him (age 13) with a barbecue skewer on his patio!” Denicola cried out, collapsing into his hands,
in makeup and costume that gave him the appearance of a middle-aged man.

“Joe’s [monologue] always gets me,” said Hanna, adding, “If any of them would make you cry, it would be his.”

The night was not without light moments, however. The audience was full of peals of laughter as sophomore Courtney Lapsley delivered her monologue, titled “Maurice,” about a “fat, frizzy-haired” tenth grader and her experiences with Maurice De Mayo in
his uncle’s dry cleaning van.

“We walked in (well, my boobs walked in first),” Lapsley says, knowing just when to pause for the audience to dissolve into laughter.

Lapsley said the experience of being involved in the show “brought me a lot closer to people. It was very inspirational, and really opened me up to how domestic violence hasn’t gone away.”

Lapsley is right. According to the One Billion Rising website, one in three women globally will experience violence in their lifetime. That means that over one billion women will be a victim or survivor of violence. It is these statistics that gave rise to the V-Day campaign One Billion Rising for Justice, started in 2013.

According to the official website, the campaign “is a global call to women survivors of violence and those who love them to gather safely in community outside places where they are entitled to justice…places where women deserve to feel safe but too often
do not.”

With this mission in mind, Equal Sex President Amanda Shaffery explained to the audience that proceeds from the show would be donated to the V-Day Organization as well as The Heartly House Foundation, an organization which “serves Frederick County residents who have been impacted by domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse.”