"The Vagina Monologues" and "Usaping Puki" (Tagalog version) - two benefit performances to raise awareness of the domestic violence problem in the Filipino community and funds to stop violence against Filipina women and girls.  To purchase tickets, go to www.cityboxoffice.com or call 415.392.4400.

Questions?  Call Filipina Women's Network at 415.278.9410 or email vday@ffwn.org.

More info about FWN, go to www.ffwn.org

Click to join FWN now!

2006 Beneficiaries

1) My Sister's House - - the first and only non-profit organization to specifically identify and address the unique needs of women and children impacted by domestic violence in the Central Valley's highly diverse Asian and Pacific Islander community.

2) Filipinas Against Violence - the Filipino organization with an advocacy campaign to end violence against Filipina women and girls

3) V-Day's 2006 Spotlight Campaign - Justice to 'Comfort Women'. On the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II, FWN and V-Day join 1,136 groups in colleges and communities in over 60 countries in calling for justice to the aging survivors who are dying one by one without redress from the Japanese government, which still denies legal responsibility. 'Comfort Women' were young women who were abducted from their homes and conscripted for the sexual gratification of the occupying Japanese Imperial Army.

2006 is the third year that the Filipina Women's Network has produced The Vagina Monologues as a strategic component of its Filipinas Against Violence campaign.  It is critical to continue the dialogue about domestic violence in the Filipino community. The all-Filipina cast and Tagalog vignettes make it closer to home.

Domestic violence is a serious problem in the Filipino community. According to a 1998 homicide survey of the San Francisco District Attorney’s office, 40% of women murdered by their partners were Filipina women. Many more incidents are unreported because victims are afraid. Victims believe they are shaming (hiya) themselves and their families if they talk about their violent situations. They blame themselves for the abuse and they do not know who can help, who can listen, where they can go for assistance. Culturally, we lack the language and the means to talk about “abuse at home”.

The Filipino media has written articles about domestic violence including features in the local Filipino television shows. Proceeds of The Vagina Monologues performances have benefited CORA (2004), WestBay (2005), the Filipinas Against Violence Campaign and Eve Ensler’s Annual V-Day Spotlight Campaigns (The Murdered and Missing Women of Juarez, Mexico in 2004, The Women of Iraq in 2005 and in 2006, Justice to Comfort Women).

* Click - audience reaction to FWN's production of The Vagina Monologues performed in Taglish

* Click - cast and crew of FWN's 2006 production of The Vagina Monologues

The Vagina Monologues is a poignant and hilarious tour of the last frontier, the ultimate forbidden zone, a celebration of female sexuality in all its complexity and mystery.  Hailed as the bible for a new generation of women, it has been performed in cities all across America and at hundreds of college campuses, and has inspired a dynamic grassroots movement —V-Day—to stop violence against women.  Witty and irreverent, compassionate and wise, Eve Ensler's Obie Award—winning masterpiece gives voice to real women's deepest fantasies and fears, guaranteeing that no one who reads it will ever look at a woman's body, or think of sex, in quite the same way again.

EVE ENSLER is the Obie-Award-winning author of The Vagina Monologues, translated into over 35 languages and running in theaters all over the world. Her experience performing The Vagina Monologues inspired her to create V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls.

Ms. Ensler has devoted her life to stopping violence, envisioning a planet in which women and girls will be free to thrive, rather than merely survive. The Vagina Monologues is based on Ensler's interviews with more than 200 women. With humor and grace the piece celebrates women's sexuality and strength.

"Women have entrusted Eve with their most intimate experiences, from sex to birthing....I think men as well as women, will emerge from these pages feeling more free within themselves—and about each other."—Gloria Steinem

"A compelling rhapsody of the female essence. . . . Ultimately Ensler achieves something extraordinary." —Chicago Tribune

“By the end of the show, the audience has moved from slightly embarrassed to highly engaged, sometimes enraged, and ultimately enlarged. They leave understanding that a woman is more that the sum of her parts, but if some of her parts are unmentionable, she is diminished.” —O Magazine

"Spellbinding, funny, and almost unbearably moving . . . it is both a work of art and an incisive piece of cultural history, a poem and a polemic, a performance and a balm and a benediction." —Variety