Tonight is your chance to catch the world premiere of Vagina Monologues playwright Eve Ensler's new cracker, I Am an Emotional Creature

"Girls today often find themselves in a struggle between remaining strong and true to themselves and conforming to society's expectations in an attempt to please.

They are taught not to be too intense, too passionate, too smart or too open. They are encouraged to shut down their instincts, their outrage, their desires and their dreams, to be polite, to obey the rules," says ground-breaking playwright Eve Ensler in her book I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Lives of Girls Around the World.

The woman who started a worldwide V-day campaign with her eye-opening play The Vagina Monologues, shifts focus from women to girls in her new play, I Am an Emotional Creature, which has a world premiere tonight in Mumbai. This is the first time a playwright of Eve's stature is premiering her play in India.

She writes fictional monologues and stories inspired by girls around the globe. "People like reality shows which are so unreal; these are, in fact, the true realities," says producer and director Mahabanoo Mody-Kotwal, who also directed the Indian leg of Ensler's cult play.

Playwright and author Eve Ensler will be present at NCPA tonight for the world premiere of her new play.

"Through rants, poetry, questions, and facts, we come to understand the universality of girls everywhere," says co-director Kaizad Kotwal. Slumdog Millionaire choreographer Longinus Fernandes has interspersed these with three dance pieces spanning 15 dance forms, from Salsa to Sufi.

Among the girls Ensler creates is an anorexic blogger, who eats less and less; a Masai girl from Kenya unwilling to endure female genital mutilation; a Bulgarian sex slave, no more than fifteen who has only 35 minutes before her pimp comes looking for her; a Chinese factory worker making Barbie dolls; a pregnant girl trying to decide if she should keep her baby.

"Why are so many people more afraid of sex than stud missiles?" Mahabanoo quotes from the play, "Everybody sells everything with sex, yet we can't talk to our kids about sex."

Actress Gunjan Bakshi plays a 16 year-old whose parents trick her into a nose job on her birthday. The irony is that she loves her old nose. "It made me who I am!" she protests. Dilnaz Irani plays the anorexic girl in search of the "perfect body". Pooja Ruparel is the girl taken captive by soldiers in Congo.

In true Ensler style, the end comes with the big question: 'How to be a Girl in 2010', about how politicians and do-gooders have scr*wed up the world.u00a0 "Corporates own everything from our genes to rain," says Mahabanoo.

I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls will have its world premiere tonight at 8 pm at Tata Theatre, NCPA, Nariman Point. For tickets, call 22824567.
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