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Department play to highlight modern women

By Drake Long, For The Miami Student

Students and residents of Oxford will have the opportunity to see issues women face around the world with the Department of Theatre's performance of "Emotional Creature."

Director Rosalyn Benson will premiere the play Oct. 1 through4 at 7:30 p.m. and Oct. 5 at 2 p.m. in the Gates-Abegglen Theatre. A 5 p.m. panel will precede the Oct. 2performance.

Originally a book titled "Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World," the play offers an earnest examination of the pressure placed on women, not only in America, but in different societies around the globe.

Six characters star in this play, each representing a different country and embodying a real life issue script writer Eve Ensler observed during her travel and research. Ensler wrote "The Vagina Monologues," an episodic play performed every year on campus that uses a similar format to tell its stories.

Other works by Ensler, a Tony-Award winning playwright, include "The Treatment," "The Good Body" and "Conviction."

Miami University students Nora Papke, Natalie Santoro, Tamara Ljubibratic, Myka Lipscomb, Natasia Reinhardt and Meryl Juergens play the six unnamed characters of "Emotional Creature." Papke described her character as an American girl transitioning into high school.

"Her big thing is she's real insecure," Papke said. "She also has two moms so that's on her mind, too. She struggles a lot with needing attention; she needs validation for her actions and what she says. She's also a leader. She starts the show, she starts a game, she starts a dance. She's always starting something. I feel like that's born out of her insecurity, too."

A second character featured in the show is an Iranian girl from the elite upper class. The Iranian status symbol of a nose job for young women is a pressure weighing heavily on Girl No. 2, and one not unlike stress girls face in more progressive countries. Benson described some of the challenges some other characters face and the monologues focusing on them.

"There's a story about a woman from the Congo, who was kidnapped and held for two years," Benson said. "There's a Bulgarian girl, who was a sex slave and was sold into slavery by her father and a policeman, and there's a story about a young Chinese woman who puts the head on Barbie dolls."

Despite the serious challenges and oppression these characters face, Benson and Papke said"Emotional Creature" is ultimately a play about girls and women around the world taking back their agency.

"It's about unity and empowerment and showing people you don't have to live in a way where it seems you're sorry for being who you are," Papke said.

Benson went further with an interpretation of the play's theme, talking about "Emotional Creature" as a discussion on how to be a girl in the modern world.

"It deals with some of the ironies in that," Benson said. "One of the lines is, 'How do I love my body when I'm supposed to be thin? How do I have a child when there are a billion-trillion people in the world? Do I want to pay my college tuition or my health insurance?' So it asks a lot of questions."

Tickets for "Emotional Creature" are $7 for students, $10 for adults and $8 for seniors. They are on sale now at the MU Box Office.