Senior Olivia McLaughlin performs at the Powerful Women in Performance event in The Cave March 14. The event celebrated powerful women at PLU and featured singing, fiddling, spoken word poetry and visual arts. Photo by Katie DePreker.

By Una Tingvik Haave, A&E Writer

The Commuter Lounge and the Diversity Center partnered with the Women’s Center to showcase powerful women and their talents last Friday in The Cave.

Senior Olivia McLaughlin performs at the Powerful Women in Performance event in The Cave March 14. The event celebrated powerful women at PLU and featured singing, fiddling, spoken word poetry and visual arts.
Senior Olivia McLaughlin performs at the Powerful Women in Performance event in The Cave March 14. The event celebrated powerful women at PLU and featured singing, fiddling, spoken word poetry and visual arts. Photo by Katie DePreker.

Powerful Women in Performance was the brainchild of Senior Cori DeVerse, whose job is to come up with programs for commuter students at Pacific Lutheran University.

“I was inspired by my own theater background to do something that empowered women,” DeVerse said. “We have a lot of talented women here, and so I thought ‘lets do a show performance, and showcase them.’”

DeVerse sent emails encouraging female PLU students with any talent to sign up, and sign up they did.

“We have everything from a fiddler, to spoken word, to PLU’s dance team and HERmonic [female a cappella team] performing. And then we also have awesome artists,” DeVerse said.

DeVerse also performed two songs herself.

The women’s performances seemed to be influenced by the powerful women topic, with song choices like “Let No Man Steal Your Time” and “Momma Knows Best.”

First on stage was PLU’s student-run female a cappella group HERmonic. The group performed three songs. Exuding confidence, the women performed with a lot of attitude, finger-snapping and sassy dance moves.

“I jumped at the opportunity to perform with such great talent and such solid people,”  sophomore Sadi Wentz said, who performed two songs on stage.

In between each performance, artwork by female PLU students was presented. The artworks included photographs, paintings, screen prints and steel art.

“I do think there’s a lot of talent,” senior Megan Konkel, who helped organize the event, said. “I think this would be a great event to do every year, just because there’s such a wide variety of talent, and I don’t think it always gets showcased.”

The audience also seemed to enjoy the event. “[The crowd] was small, but there was really great energy,” Wentz said.

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