VDAY: Eve Ensler performs "The Vagina Monologues"

Lilith Rose was mesmerized the first time she sat in the audience of Eve Ensler’s groundbreaking play “The Vagina Monologues.”

“I remember thinking, ‘Some day I’m going to be on stage performing this,’” she said.

And she will be: The 60-year-old out psychotherapist is organizing the local production, presented at 3 and 8 p.m. March 10 at The Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St.

Ensler wrote the original monologues in 1996 after interviewing 200 women about relationships, sex and violence.

She has since extended the monologues into an international grassroots campaign to end violence against women called V-Day.

As part of V-Day, students, activists and others come together annually to stage Ensler’s work.

“This is an opportunity to have your awareness raised and learn about what happens every day in cities, streets, bedrooms, our country and the world,” Rose said. “It’s a chance to learn what women and girls live with and are exposed to, and how they’re violated. It’s disturbing and uncomfortable and awkward, but it will also make you laugh. Be prepared to laugh, cry and squirm.”

For the Painted Bride production, 20 women ages 22-60, with varying degrees of acting experience, will perform the monologues.

“We range in ethnicity, orientation and age,” Rose said. “We’re a diverse group, but we’re all passionate about healing women and girls, and we’ve all grown closer as a result. It’s really been a very spiritual and sacred experience.

“Putting this production together and being involved with V-Day has given me a chance to have a voice on a larger scale,” she said. “As a result, my life and my partner’s life have changed. I’m touched and humbled and gratified by this experience. And when I grow up, I want to be Eve Ensler.”

Rose said collaborating with so many other creative voices was challenging at times.

“It can be difficult working with people whose energy is different from mine,” she said. “But part of the mentality behind V-Day is that everyone who wants to be involved can be. It was just a matter of finding the balance between all of the different personalities involved. In the end, though, everyone was very supportive.”

Each year, V-Day chooses a spotlight campaign to bring awareness to an underrepresented issue.

This year’s campaign is women in conflict zones, an issue that bears great significance in light of the current war in Iraq.

“Ensler has chosen this campaign to bring attention to the lives of these women in war zones,” Rose said. “Women are still considered to be possessions of men. We’re still very much a minority. We don’t hear about it in the media because it’s not sexy, and sex sells. The media is interested in showing Baghdad being bombed and people lying on the ground. But it’s not interested in depicting women being burned or kidnapped, or having their hands or nipples cut off or acid thrown in their faces. It’s just accepted. We turn away and don’t challenge it.”

Because the monologues deal with such emotionally intense material, an audience talkback session will be held after the 3 p.m. show.

“It will be a chance for the audience to talk about what moved or touched them,” Rose said. “For some people, it might mean standing up and saying that they’ve experienced sexual abuse — that’s a very powerful thing for someone to do.”

To carry out V-Day’s mission, ticket sales will benefit two local organizations, Women in Transition and the Institute for Safe Families.

“These are local organizations that have been around for many years,” Rose said. “We spent a lot of time looking over the mission statements of various organizations and we all agreed that these two matched V-Day’s efforts the best. We wanted organizations that weren’t only about treating abused women, but also made real efforts to prevent violence.”

Rose said she was especially drawn to Women in Transition because of its gay and lesbian outreach efforts.

“Both the groups will have tables set up at the event for people to get more information and become more involved,” she said.

Rose said it’s important for the entire community to support the event.

“We need to raise awareness in our country and let people know what’s going on behind closed doors. Through our voices, through our money, through our actions, we need to say ‘no more violence,’” she said. “We need to become activists, all of us. Our country as we know it is in sad shape, and as a people, we’re apathetic. We certainly don’t pretend to have all the answers here, but what we’re doing is raising consciousness, and making people say, ‘What can I do to change this?’”