by August Kissel, Web Editor

Each year, the Manhattan College Players host the V-Day play. This play is meant to be a brave space where the players can take action through the medium of theater and this year monologues.

The play was called “The Independent Women” and it was directed by junior Isabel Quiñones and sophomore Katie Doyle. Together the girls curated a variety of poems, spoken word and monologues. These monologues were performed with only four scripts and four stands.

For each performance different participants would go onto to the stage and recite their piece while dressed in red and black. These pieces revolved around the themes of sexual assault, female empowerment and love.

“We had a lot of pieces about loving yourself and loving who you are and how you look and I think this is also really important because we have this image of what we think we should look like,” said senior Sofia Tollinche.

“We took some from online, some different poetry websites, one of them was written by a student. Katie Doyle wrote her own and she performed her own. We are always looking for submissions so it’s kinda whenever someone wants to submit something they can, and it can be put in our library to be used,” added Quiñones.

The V-Day play is always open auditions to all of the students on campus, and there are no cuts. Quiñones and Doyle worked to make sure each of the participants felt comfortable and in place with their spoken word pieces. The goal was to have each participant embody their piece to give the performance more power, as well as place a spotlight on the already empowered women here on MC campus.

“There were a lot of people here who were not in Players typically, that come just for this event just to try it. Everyone gets casted, we don’t cut, because we think that this is a really important show that can be open for many people,” said Quiñones.

Tollinche, who has participated in the show every year she has been on MC campus, felt this year’s performance was particularly powerful.

“The expectations were the same as it was my freshman, sophomore, and junior year. Obviously it was a little bit more special considering the climate that we are in right now. I did expect what was going on, but I didn’t expect it to be as powerful as it was,” added Tollinche.

Prior to the beginning of the show Quiñones and Doyle played a video representing the recent work of women and the feminist movement who have been trying to obtain a safer and more equal world for women in the past few years. They specifically highlighted the videos of Christine Blasey Ford and Aly Raisman during their testimonies against their predators. These two women amongst many others who have battled such experiences over the years are beyond inspiring and are a true embodiment of strength and perseverance in establishing justice for those who have been silenced for far too long.

Doyle brings it full circle when she said, “Isabel and I agree on this, hate is not the way to unite people, it’s love. We wanted to show love for our bodies and show love for ourselves, and show love for how far we have come already … And that we can continue making this love grow.”