Fourth-year social work major Justina Fuqua has found a way to blend her interest in theatrical performance with her professional aspirations of helping others. It’s called the Beaver Monologues, and it will make its third annual debut in April with Fuqua as the director for her second year.
“The Beaver Monologues is a performance of anonymous submissions about female empowerment,” said Fuqua. “It’s a project to localize Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues and to start a conversation here.”
The Beaver Monologues is based off the idea of prominent playwright and feminist activist Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues, a play of personal stories Ensler gathered after interviewing hundreds of diverse women about their experience with womanhood. The play won an Obie Award, the highest honor an Off-Broadway production can earn, for its playwriting and has been performed around the globe in different languages since its 1996 premiere.
Alexis Link, Dakota Dellenbach and Constance Moushon rehearse for the 2018 Beaver Monologues. Photo by Hannah Conklin
The Vagina Monologues was performed on Bluffton’s campus in the spring of 2015 under the direction of Rebecca Juliana, a 2016 social work graduate. During Juliana’s senior year, she went on to develop the Bluffton-specific Beaver Monologues as a departmental honor’s project. The first production was performed in April 2016.
Fuqua was impacted by the performance of the Vagina Monologues on campus and the founding of the Beaver Monologues during her sophomore year. When Juliana graduated in 2016, Fuqua and several others received an email with all the information and instructions, and Fuqua felt called to continue the conversation Juliana started. With guidance from Juliana and help from others, the second annual Beaver Monologues was performed last March under Fuqua’s direction.
“After last year’s show, I received a letter anonymously thanking me for the performance,” said Fuqua.
“I realized if I can make a difference in one person’s life, I can make a difference for more. It was really liberating to feel like I was empowering someone else.”
Returning this year as director, Fuqua began planning as early as September. The process of creating each year’s unique production begins with a call to the campus community to anonymously submit personal stories about their experiences as a woman. The production team then makes their selections, edits the monologues into a narrative script and stages the stories into a production. The final show comes together in roughly a month.
Anna Cammarn rehearses for the 2018 Beaver Monologues. Photo by Hannah Conklin
Fuqua said the process is exhausting, but “it’s kind of like my baby now.”
Heidi Mercer, assistant professor of social work and advisor to the Beaver Monologues said, “I was super excited when Justina approached me about being involved.”
Mercer has held positions in both Northwest Ohio and the UK working with victims of trafficking and sexual assault before coming to Bluffton to teach. Most recently, she was a human trafficking advocate at the Lima-based Crime Victim Services. She first saw a performance of the Vagina Monologues at Bowling Green State University.
“I was impacted by the vulnerability of the actors sharing someone’s intimate personal story,” said Mercer.
“It’s empowering to have local people share stories,” she said of the Beaver Monologues. “It’s taking control back over something that had been done to them. It’s not just isolated to big cities or big colleges.”
With new submissions each year, the Beaver Monologues is designed to continually evolve and to allow for new topics to be addressed in new ways.
This year, the cast features international students, transfers, athletes and non-athletes as well as both women and men. As a Beaver Monologues first, two men will perform alongside 13 women.
Fuqua said she received backlash surrounding the decision, but asked, “Why would we not include men in the conversation? We need to define feminism for what it is in its entirety.”
“If we don’t include men in the conversation, I don’t know how we can move forward,” said Mercer. “Men are our allies.”
Fuqua said she sees her role in the Beaver Monologues as strongly connected to her career aspirations in social work field. As a professor with years of professional experience, Mercer agreed. She said she finds the Beaver Monologues’ focus on advocating and empowering to be intertwined with the social work profession.
Erika Byler, left, and Alexis Link paint a mattress to be used as the set for the 2018 Beaver Monologues. Photo by Hannah Conklin
“The premise of social work is advocating for others,” said Fuqua. “This project is a prime example of advocating for voices that have been silenced.”
The Beaver Monologues will be performed April 6-7 in Bob’s Place in Marbeck Center. The show will begin at 9:30 p.m. April 6 as a Marbeck After Dark event. On April 7, the show will start at 8 p.m. and a talk-back will follow.
“The conversation about female empowerment extends beyond this college campus. We need to hold ourselves accountable to have these conversations if we want to seek change,” said Fuqua.
Image at top of page is a Witmarsum file photo from a performance of the 2017 Beaver Monologues.
