The Fascinating Being
It is so important for young girls to understand that there is no shame in being themselves
by Tanisha Taitt
Tanisha Taitt is an actor/director/playwright, singer-songwriter, arts educator and activist. She began directing in 2007 and has helmed 21 productions of 14 plays. She is Program Director of Acting Up Stage's One Song Glory youth training program, Director of Children's Peace Theatre's summer Peace Camp program, and a former Resident Artist Educator with Young People's Theatre. Recent productions include Shadowpath Productions' The White Rose, bare for Toronto Youth Theatre and The Power Of Harriet T! for YPT. For six of the last seven years she has been Producer of V-Day Toronto, the local campaign in the global movement to end violence against women and girls. A 2013 Haroldee, Ms Taitt is a two-time YWCA Woman of Distinction Award nominee for her commitment to artistic excellence and social justice.
Emotional Creature is about the fascinating being that is the adolescent female. It is about how that magical being differs and is the same around the planet, and how the ball of emotion that is the teenaged girl lives very much inside of us all. It is based on chats that playwright Eve Ensler had with girls around the globe over a 15-year period. People like to say that they were interviews but there were never any notepads or tape recorders; there were just conversations that left indelible impressions on her. She would talk to girls -- in Bosnia, in Los Angeles, in Nairobi -- and learn who they were and what 'girlhood' meant and looked like where they lived. There were certain stories that stood apart, ripped her soul out or resonated in such a way that she couldn't forget them. So when she sat down to write the book that the play is based on, I Am An Emotional Creature: The Secret Life Of Girls Around The World, it was those stories that surfaced. She drew from those conversations to create fictional stories based on recollections of those girls' realities.
