Garden State Players Announce Play to Benefit 180 Turning Lives Around

Garden State Players is casting for its second annual production of Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues: The V-Day Campaign" to benefit 180 Turning Lives Around. GSP is seeking women interested in helping in all areas from performing to the production team. For the 2013 performance, GSP is seeking a wide variety of passionate, dedicated women with various talents and careers, who are willing to push through their normal comfort zone and wear the hats of "activist." The performers will read from script cards as opposed to memorization, a convention used in all the professional productions of the play that reminds the audience that these are real women's stories. The show will rehearse Thursday nights beginning Feb 7 (except Valentine's Day). "The Vagina Monologues" will run three consecutive Tuesdays on April 2, 9, and 16 at Trinity Restaurant in Keyport.

Last year, GSP produced two extraordinary performances to sold out crowds raising $3,000 for 180 Turning Lives Around and the V-Day Campaign. GSP had a cast of 12 amazing woman, none of whom were trained actors. In fact, they were average, everyday women who felt the need to make a difference in helping stop the violence.

Anyone interested in performing or helping with the production should attend a production meeting 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 24 at the Cullen Center, 1776 Union Ave., Hazlet. No experience is needed. There are many jobs that need filling besides performing. Due to the intensity, subject matter and strong language, no one under 18 will be cast in the show.

180 Turning Lives Around, Inc., is a Monmouth County nonprofit organization dedicated to ending domestic and sexual violence. V-Day Campaign is a global activist movement to end violence against women and girls. Ninety percent of the ticket proceeds from the Garden State Players' performance will benefit Turning Lives Around. Ten percent of ticket sales will go to the V-Day Campaign so this extraordinary event can continue to take place year after year... until the violence stops.