Eve Ensler and William Shakespeare might not seem to have a lot in common as playwrights, but according to Leslie McCauley, chair of the theater department at Santa Rosa Junior College, the author of The Vagina Monologues and the creator of numerous cross-dressing Elizabethans are just two sides this year of a gender mirror that forces us all to question what we believe about the lives of men and women, boys and girls.

“It’s so perfect, the way it’s worked out with our spring season,” McCauley says. Beginning this weekend, a cast of seven young women will perform Emotional Creature, Ensler’s powerful exploration of the lives of teenage girls around the world. The play, which resembles the structure of The Vagina Monologues, with the addition of singing, dancing and poetry, is based on actual interviews Ensler conducted with young women. Their stories, some funny and some devastating, run the spectrum from American girls struggling with bullying and “mean girl” clique warfare, to girls from Africa and Bulgaria caught up in actual warfare, kidnapping and sexual slavery.

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