A new web series about men going through menstruation soon will be available for students to enjoy.
Reily Preston and Mercedes Arndt, acting seniors, are working on a seven-episode film series detailing a man named “Dave” and his journey with menstruation.
The series will be posted to YouTube at some point in the spring on a profile titled “Scrap It! Comedy.”
“I invited Reily into my room,” Arndt said. “I was like, ‘I want to make sketches, and I want to do it with you.’”
They went through a number of ideas before getting to the topic of menstruation, Arndt said.
“We were like, ‘What if a dude got his period randomly, but the dude was played by a woman?,’” Preston said.
Arndt said they originally planned to use this idea for one sketch, but eventually decided to expand the idea to a seven-episode series, with Preston playing “Dave,” the main character.
Arndt said the series contains written, fictional dialogue, but also has verbatim stories from women about periods. They used the Facebook group “Girl Bosses Unite” to ask women for their stories involving menstruation, Arndt said.
Preston said they are almost done with Episode 1, but they will not post any episodes until they are finished.
She also said every member of the cast is a woman, even those cast for male characters.
Preston and Arndt said they want to use this series to create opportunities for women, raise awareness for natural occurrences that happen to women and take command of their own work.
Preston said she talked to Kristen Cerelli, visiting assistant professor of acting, to get insight on the lack of roles written for women.
“There are female characters in Shakespeare’s canon and in several plays, but they’re not as multidimensional as we hope,” Preston said. “It’s important to learn to empathize with women when they’re on their period. It’s a universal thing that happens to all of us. Take the taboo off of it so that we can speak openly about it.”
Arndt said they plan to create more sketches as Scrap It! Comedy after this series concludes.
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