Description
V (formerly Eve Ensler) is the Tony Award winning playwright, activist, and author of the Obie award winning theatrical phenomenon, The Vagina Monologues, published in over 48 languages, performed in over 140 countries and recently heralded by The New York Times as one of the most important plays of the past 25 years, among numerous other honors. Her plays include Lemonade, Extraordinary Measures, Necessary Targets, OPC, The Good Body (Broadway and National Tour), Emotional Creature, and Fruit Trilogy, which debuted Off-Broadway in June of 2018. She recently finished performing In the Body of the World as a one-woman show which she adapted for the stage from her critically acclaimed memoir to rave reviews at Manhattan Theatre Club after its debut at the American Repertory Theater. In September 2020 she presented That Kindness, a play based on stories and interviews with CNA/NNOC/NNU frontline nurses. The play premiered on Facebook Live with a cast that included Rosario Dawson, Marisa Tomei, Billy Porter, and Rosie O'Donnell. Her musical about climate change, Dear Everything (originally Wild: A Musical Becoming), directed by Diane Paulus with music by Justin Tranter and Caroline Pennell and featuring Idina Menzel, premiered at the American Repertory Theater’s Loeb Drama Center in December 2021. Her most recent play is This is Crazy, a play about mental health. Film credits include The Vagina Monologues (HBO) and What I Want My Words to Do to You (Executive Producer, Winner of the Sundance Film Festival Freedom of Expression Award, PBS) and Mad Max: Fury Road (Consultant). Her New York Times bestselling books include Insecure At Last: A Political Memoir, I Am An Emotional Creature, and The Apology. Her most recent book is a collection of her work over the past forty years titled Reckoning. V is founder of V-Day, the 20 year old global activist movement which has raised over 100 million dollars to end violence to end violence against all women (cisgender and transgender), those who hold fluid identities, nonbinary people, girls and the planet, and the founder of One Billion Rising, the largest global mass action to end gender based violence in over 200 countries. She is a co-founder of the City of Joy, a revolutionary center for women survivors of violence in the DRC, along with Christine Schuler Deschyrver and Dr. Denis Mukwege, and appeared – along with Christine and Dr. Mukwege - in the award-winning documentary film City of Joy released globally as a Netflix Original in 190 countries. Her writings regularly appear in The Guardian and TIME Magazine. She was named one of Newsweek’s “150 Women Who Changed the World” and The Guardian’s “100 Most Influential Women.” V is the 2018 recipient of the Lucille Lortel Lifetime Achievement Award and the Lily Award. A survivor of violence, V has dedicated her life to ending violence against women and girls.
Participants