FOR A GOOD CAUSE:

Leah Greenbaum, 18, didn’t want to read about the issue of violence against women and then walk away from it.

The Newport Beach high school senior wanted to talk about it, maybe even rant a little, and hoped to effect some change.

“A woman is raped every two minutes in the United States. So much of the stuff in our life has been sugarcoated,” she said.

With a little mentoring from Sarah Lougheed, the visual and performing arts department chairwoman, producer Greenbaum got her chance Tuesday night, as students and faculty at Tarbut V’Torah Community Day School in Irvine staged a reading based on Eve Ensler’s, “A Monologue, a Memory, a Rant and a Prayer.”

With pieces reflecting personal experiences written by authors including Maya Angelou, Michael Cunningham and Ensler, the book brought to the forefront of consciousness many issues dealing with the brutality, neglect and repression of women in society.

The production was a V-Day event fundraiser, one of many in a movement aimed at raising awareness of violence against women and children by sending a message in the United States and worldwide.

Greenbaum read Ensler’s book over winter break, found instructions in the back on how to get involved and organize a V-Day event, and approached Lougheed about helping her produce the reading.

At a town hall meeting five weeks ago at the high school, Greenbaum presented her idea, asked students and faculty to perform or help out, and by the end of the day, had about 27 volunteers on board.

Jeremy Kuperberg and Greenbaum have attended Tarbut V’Torah since they were in kindergarten, and will graduate together in June. When his friend put out the call to arms at the town hall meeting, Kuperberg was eager to join the project.

“I thought it was really amazing that a fellow student would take the initiative to speak out for a cause like this, and I wanted to be a part of it,” he said.

Kuperberg said his is one of the few more positive readings in the performance, one that isn’t as harsh as some of the other pieces. Then again, Kuperberg said, there’s no avoiding that the subject matter is harsh.

“This issue doesn’t really get raised enough in light of the scale of it, and how often these things are happening, here and around the world,” he said.

At the dress rehearsal Friday, Greenbaum and Lougheed were amazed at how well the readings went, and Greenbaum said what she saw surpassed anything she could have imagined.

“I’m in awe of my closest friends and mentors confronting an issue that is so painful, so horrible and epidemic in our world. They’re so brave to have the courage to stand up there and perform like this.”

Lougheed thinks her student is the one who’s amazing, and said Greenbaum was overcome with emotion at the end of the rehearsal.

Lougheed recalled how Greenbaum was inspired after reading one of the essays in Ensler’s book, written by a journalist who interviewed two 12-year-old girls in a Cambodian brothel. In the end, the man just walks away, Lougheed said, goes back to New York, his story ends up on the front page of the New York Times, and he realizes he’s used those girls in much the same way they were exploited in the brothel.

“When the rehearsal ended, I think she [Greenbaum] had finally begun to realize what she’d done. It was so important to her that she not be like the journalist who walked away from the brothel and didn’t do anything. He wrote the story and was done. She didn’t want to be like that,” Lougheed said.

In lieu of having to pay royalty and licensing fees for using her material, Ensler asks any group to donate 10% of the money they raise to the Katrina Warriors, a group dedicated to helping women and girls living or returning to build their lives in New Orleans and the Gulf South.

The remaining 90% will go to Women Forward, a Jewish Family Service Program that assists women in transition to become financially self sufficient.

Greenbaum asked that the money donated to the organization from Tarbut V’Torah’s V-Day event be specifically “earmarked” for a woman who is a victim of domestic violence.

In addition to what they raised through ticket sales, the school has received donations, and a PayPal account has been set up on the school’s website, www.tarbut.com, for anyone wanting to support the cause.

While all the stories in Ensler’s book deal with women’s inner strength, there’s also a lot of anger, Greenbaum said, and as powerful as the book was, she knew the pieces would be even more commanding as a performance.

Greenbaum read a piece called “In Memory of Imette,” about an NYU graduate student who was raped and murdered in New York in 2006.

“The story in the book was written by a woman who was shocked and angered by the case, furious that something like that even happens to women,” Greenbaum said.

“What was surprising to me in hearing the pieces read is how much more shocking and alarming they are, how each piece was magnified in the performance.”

SUE THOENSEN may be reached at (714) 966-4627 or at sue.thoensen@latimes.com.