Empowering The Young: "Emotional Creature"

We're a long way from "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." 

Eve Ensler's "Emotional Creature," in an outside production imported from California's Berkeley Repertory Theatre to The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre at The Pershing Square Signature Center, through January 13th, details the atrocities that so often rob girls of their childhood.

Molly Carden  in "Emotional Creature" by Eve Ensler. Photo by Carol Rosegg.

All over the globe, they are deprived of their girlhood by being abducted, beaten into prostitution, forced into factory labor, raped, denied an education. But it's not just crimes, like genital mutilation, that keep girls from enjoying their youth. There is also peer pressure to be skinny, to be straight, to be popular, to be pretty that add hardship to the confusion that is part of growing up.  

Ashley Bryant in "Emotional Creature" by Eve Ensler. Photo by Carol Rosegg.

This panoply of obstacles to self-actualization is rendered in monologue, and in song and dance, in "Emotional Creature" by an enthusiastic cast of young women.

Joaquina Kalukango in "Emotional Creature" by Eve Ensler. Photo by Carol Rosegg.

In her title, Ensler has co-opted the notion that conflates being female with having an excess of feeling, the diagnosis of which was once simply called hysteria. Unfortunately, even though Ensler's earnest feminism is never in doubt, the passion in "Emotional Creature" feels like politically correct lip-service. The world-wide success of her earlier play,"The Vagina Monologues," led to the creation of V-Girls, as a platform to empower the young  as Ensler's foundation, V-Day, a global activist movement to end violence against women had empowered a generation of adult women.

Olivia Oguma in "Emotional Creature" by Eve Ensler. Photo by Carol Rosegg.

Subtitled "the secret life of girls around the world," "Emotional Creature" is just too ambitious in its scope. There is too much going on-- some of it funny, some of it heartwrenching, some of it inconsequential -- unless perhaps you are that teenage girl trying to fit in.  What we don't get is to feel fully engaged with "Emotional Creature." 

These girls stories are for the most part too dire to trivialize, but "Emotional Creature," in aiming alll over the world glosses over and simplifies a world of troubles. In fact, some of the lighter and funnier moments are the best part of "Emotional Creature."  Those include the cast in a chat room worrying over what not to eat. Ashley Bryant taking and critiquing pictures for her Facebook page and Sade Namei missing her pre-nose job face make for amusing insights into the secret lives of girls.

The cast also includes  Emily Grosland, Joaquina Kalukango, Molly Carden, and  Olivia Oguma. Running time is just under 90 minutes.

For more information please visit http://emotionalcreature.com.