Theater

• Sheena Metal was most recently seen in the the VDAY New York 2006 Celebrity Charity Cast's presentation of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues. The two evening, charity performance of Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues was a smash hit for the Upper East Side! Running April 1st & 2nd, the celebrity cast and new monologues by playwright Eve Ensler brought pertinent attention to the continued abuse of women throughout the world, with particluar emphasis on the "Comfort Women" -- the group of women forced into sexual subservience by the Japanese military in WWII.

See the Celebrity Cast!

Celebrity cast included:
Kathryn Erbe
Ally Sheedy
Danielle Egnew
Jenny Sherwin (a.k.a. "Sheena Metal")
Senator Liz Krueger
Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney

and others...celebrating all that it is to be a woman.
Musical Guest: Bet Williams Trio.

For more information on upcoming events, visit:
www.vdaynyc.org

V-Day Spotlight 2006: Justice to ‘Comfort Women’

On the 60th Anniversary of the end of World War II, V-Day joins women and men around the world in calling for justice to ‘Comfort Women’ survivors. The euphemism ‘comfort women’ was coined by imperial Japan to refer to young females of various ethnic and national backgrounds who were forced to offer sexual services to the Japanese troops during the Asia/Pacific Wars between 1932 and 1945. Some were minors; others were deceptively recruited by middlemen; still more were detained and forcibly abducted. Estimates of the number of ‘comfort women’ range between 50,000 to 200,000.

In the early 1990s, Korean victims of Japan’s military sexual slavery broke their silence and came forward nearly a half century after WWII, followed by other survivors in China, Taiwan, North Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Netherlands, and Timor L’Este. Now the aging survivors are dying off one by one without redress from the Japanese government, which still denies legal responsibility. The V-Day 2006 Spotlight joins the ‘comfort women’ survivors and women’s groups from East and Southeast Asia in calling for justice and reparations for the unanswered war crimes.

V-Day NY Spotlight 2006: The Lotus Project

Proceeds from the benefit go towards supporting the V-Day mission as well as The Comfort Women. Proceeds will also support a local, V-Day approved, organization. In this case, it is a grassroots organization called “The Lotus Project,” dedicated to working with women who have been abused and end up in prison. The primarily goal of The Lotus Project is to educate, and will focus on children in schools and colleges too.

Using the symbol of the lotus, the project is about people rising above the difficulties of their life to find new meaning. Its aim is to help them blossom, despite hardships. So many people go through great difficulties to emerge as whole people. The “Lotus symbol” becomes a metaphor for rising above adversity. It is a very comprehensive program that originally began in 2000 to help women in prison.

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