Emotional Creature Celebrates Girls Lives

There have been so few shows and events that truly reveal what it is like to be a girl that when you see truth - the good and the bad - you immediately know that you are seeing something special.  For me, the TV show that epitomized girlhood will always be My So Called Life, the Winnie Holzman created show, that ran for one season almost 20 years ago. 

Emotional Creature written by the activist storyteller Eve Ensler creator of the Vagina Monologues, is a show that takes that tells the truth about girls lives.  Six girls of different races and different experiences take the stage that looks like a girls bedroom and talk about what it is like to be a girl in a culture that still doesn't understand them.  In individual monologues they tell stories of not fitting in, bullying, struggling with sexuality, rape. 

What Eve Ensler does is embrace girlhood in its most honest manner.  What she says is that being a girl is unique - that girls are yes, emotional, but there is nothing wrong with that.  Being a girl does not mean you should be raped and held captive.  Being a girl does not mean that you should have a baby before you are ready.  Being a girl does not mean you should be dismissed.  In our country with our first world problems we still don't value girls as we value boys.  Ensler along with director Jo Bonney put these difficult issues front and center in a very accessible and fun way.

The play with catchy music by Charl-Johan Lingenfelder reminds us that being a girl is at times very messy, but also it is just normal to have these emotions.  But Eve Ensler being Eve Ensler, she also reminds us of the horrible way some of the world still treats girls and she makes it emphatically clear that this is not ok.  She is a true warrior for all the girls of the world.

Emotional Creature is playing in NY now through January 13.