Roughly 50 students auditioned Sunday for roles and performances in V-February, an annual month-long campaign to promote gender equality through performances and discussions, sponsored by the Center for Gender and Student Engagement, event organizers said. An additional 10 more are expected to audition today.
V-February’s three main events are a performance of Eve Ensler’s 1996 episodic play “The Vagina Monologues,” as well as “Voices” and “Upstaging Stereotypes,” each of which is a series of performances created and performed by self-identifying women and men, respectively, at Dartmouth. Smaller workshops, forums and discussions will also be held throughout the month.
Auditions for all three components of V-February were held Sunday, with make-up auditions scheduled for Monday.
Kalie Marsicano ’17, co-director of the “Voices” performance, said that roughly 40 women auditioned Sunday for “Voices” and “The Vagina Monologues.” A smaller group turned out for Upstaging Stereotypes, with roughly 10 men auditioning, co-director Yobiel Kelati ’15 said.
There will be no cuts for either group, and Kelati said that the auditions were more focused on brainstorming and giving attendees a sense of what future rehearsals would entail.
Marsicano said she was pleased with the turnout, which she said was not so large that it was unmanageable. She said she was concerned that too many people might audition following the creation and success of the “Voices” program last year.
“We had a great turnout,” Jessica King Fredel ’17, co-director of the “Voices” performance, said. “I feel it was really representative of campus.”
This year, “Voices” will be the culminating event, set to take place in the beginning of March, Marsicano said. It will feature poetry, dance, monologues and music, and will focus on what it means to be a woman at Dartmouth today.
V-February has expanded markedly in recent years, organizers said, growing from its inception as V-Day — part of a national movement of the same name — to V-Week and, in 2014, to V-February, a month-long series of performances and events. Both the “Voices” and “Upstaging Stereotypes” performances are recent additions to the program, created in the past two years.
“‘Voices’ came into being originally as a complement to the ‘Vagina Monologues,’ but it’s moved beyond that,” King Fredel said.
“Upstaging Stereotypes” was created as “an opportunity for men to be involved as allies,” she added.
Kelati said that “Upstaging Stereotypes’” small size is in line with its respective role in the month.
“I think the main focus of V-Feb is supposed to be women and femininity, and I would feel very odd, to be honest, if ‘Upstaging Stereotypes’ became one of the centerpieces of it,” he said. “That’s not what the whole month is supposed to be focused on,” he said.
While this may be true, Marsicano said that the month’s programming also aims to include men’s perspectives and to focus on equality more generally.
“Even though V-Feb does have a lot of events that are specifically organized and executed by women, it’s not a gender-exclusive series of events, and that’s not the point of the month,” she said. “It’s to promote equity across the board that’s intended to be all-encompassing.”
Marsicano also added that this year, “intersectionality and recognition of diversity” are major components of V-February.
King Fredel said that she felt last year’s performance, with which she was also involved, succeeded in creating an open dialogue on campus.
“It kind of acted as a catalyst for a lot of conversations around gender and sexuality,” she said. “It was a very approachable environment. It didn’t feel harsh.”
This year, organizers hope that the performances once again inspire a conversation on campus.
Luke Katler ’15, the artistic director of “Upstaging Stereotypes,” said that he hopes that performers and audience members alike can gain from the performances.
“[Upstaging Stereotypes] will challenge people to look at ‘male situations’ and realize that they’re layered and complex based on the individuals involved in them,” he said.
Marsicano, who, like King Fredel, was involved in the program last year, called V-February the “most transformative thing” she has done.
“It completely revamped my Dartmouth experience, and it was very foundational in me gaining a lot of self-respect and a lot of understanding of what it means to be a woman at Dartmouth,” she said.
Many of the organizers of V-February are student interns at the Center for Gender and Student Engagement.
Kalie Marsicano is a member of The Dartmouth staff.