Emotional Creature: New Play by Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues) Empowers Girls
Roda Theater / Berkeley Rep (2025 Addison Street Berkeley, CA 94704)
- Full Price:
- $29.00 - $65.00
- Our Price:
- $14.50 - $32.50*
* Additional fees apply.
All offers for Emotional Creature have expired.
The last date listed for Emotional Creature was Sunday July 15, 2012 / 7:00pm.
Currently at Roda Theater / Berkeley Rep:
Dear Elizabeth: New Play From Sarah Ruhl & Les Waters (Eurydice)
- Full Price:
- $34.00 - $67.00
- Our Price:
- $17.00 - $33.50
Sarah Ruhl and Les Waters, the acclaimed collaborators behind the recent hits Eurydice, In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play) and Three Sisters, return to Berkeley Rep with another gorgeous tale of love and longing. Dear Elizabeth follows the beautiful and bittersweet friendship between real-life poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, both of whom were poets laureate of the United States in the late 1940s. Across oceans and continents, over the course of three decades, the two artists found a true marriage of minds that played out in their many vibrant, witty and passionate letters that now spring to life on stage. This West Coast premiere paints an intimate portrait of two extraordinary -- yet also quite ordinary -- lives, translated for the theater by two of the finest artists of our time. Learn More
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Reviews & Ratings
Featured review from Goldstar Member
view more less of this reviewFound this play to be well acted but extremely heavy handed. While I appreciated the talent of the young women, I felt like I was watching a Disney musical--only the subject matter was extremely serious and dark.
Difficult subject matter, so I suppose I'm glad that they attempted to make it enjoyable for young girls to watch. If they liked it, then it was a success, but for my tastes I found much of it made me cringe.
star this review starred report as inappropriateI attended a preview performance with 2 other 50/60 year olds and the 20/something daughter of one of us - she teaches high school. We agreed that while we really wanted to like the play it just was too disjointed to hold our attention. Lots of the vignettes were riveting, the performances from the young women were outstanding, but as a whole the play just didn't work. It had no unifying point of view leaving us vaguely dissatisfied. None of us was aware that it was based on a book - perhaps reading that first might have helped, but as an freestanding entity the play was a disappointment.
star this review starred report as inappropriatea noble concept, having girls tell their stories about often highly emotional situations, but the play lacked a coherence: one moment we are in an affluent white american girl's living room as she approaches suicide, the next we are in china hearing about factory conditions. the cast, however, was extraordinary. not recommended, nevertheless.
star this review starred report as inappropriateAn extremely strong ensemble cast is trapped in a very vapid "play". Joaquina Kalukango was luminous and deserves her own one woman show. Molly Carden was a very successful chameleon. Sade Namei was also strong when she didn't slip into the insipid pseudo hip hop pacing of the show. Using loud techno music and video is not a substitute for narrative structure. The dialogue and themes clearly came from a mature women and the actors themselves were too old for their parts. The combination created a dissidence that could not be overcome.
The final disappointment were the examples of "strong girls" utilized in the play that were uninspiring and made one think that the creative folks behind this production have a strangely narrow view of the world and the value of women and girls.
No new ground is covered here. Most of the issues were not issues about girls, but rather about young women and I do think there is a big difference.
More Information About Emotional Creature
Website
http://www.berkeleyrep.org/press/photos-12ec.asp
Description
Running time is 90 minutes, with no intermission.
Eve Ensler is a Tony Award-winning playwright, performer and activist. She is the author of The Vagina Monologues, which has been translated into 48 languages and performed in over 140 countries, including sold-out runs off Broadway and on London’s West End. Her experience performing that show inspired her to create V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. Her other work includes plays such as The Good Body and Here, the memoir Insecure at Last and the novel I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World, which became a New York Times bestseller in 2010.
"Emotional Creature is about being a girl in the world in 2011 and about discovering the girl in each of us," Ensler said in a statement. "It is about changing the verb from “please” to “create” or “defy” or “resist” or “imagine.” It is about traveling and dancing and refusing. It is about telling secrets and breaking taboos and building a posse. Where else would we begin this in America than Berkeley, in what other theatre than Berkeley Rep, which has a gorgeous history of pushing the edge, engaging in social issues, and conjuring community."
About the Ticket Supplier: Berkeley Repertory Theatre
Known for its amazing and adventurous audience, the nonprofit has provided a home for emerging and established artists since 1968. With two stages and a Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre, Berkeley Rep premieres exhilarating new plays and reimagined classics. In the last five years alone, the company has helped send five shows to Broadway: Green Day's American Idiot, Bridge & Tunnel, In the Next Room (or the vibrator play), Passing Strange and Wishful Drinking. Come see tomorrow's plays today at Berkeley Rep.
Berkeley Rep operates two performance spaces: the Roda Theatre, a state-of-the-art 600-seat proscenium theatre, and the intimate, 400-seat Thrust Stage. The Theatre is located in the heart of downtown Berkeley's arts district, just a half block from the Berkeley BART station, near lots of restaurants, cafe, pubs, and cool retailers.