Eve Ensler's book of poems I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Lives of Girls Around the World chronicles the many struggles young women face in today's world: body image, human trafficking, violence, love....This stage adaptation uses music and dance to empower the cast and inspire the audience. It is a fantastic piece of theatre, especially as conceived by the director, Rosalyn Benson. The play itself doesn't call for bells and whistles. It needed an environment that could provide levels and provide a surface for movement. In one monologue the actor has just climbed to the top of a mountain, and in another an actor is hiding from a captor. I went with levels legged with pipe and accessed by ladders to accommodate some of this staging. Levels could be climbed onto and hidden under. 

The proscenium architecture in this space really separates the stage from the audience. We built an extension off the front of the stage to help overcome that distance. That seemed important for a show with a small cast that directly addresses the audience.

One of the major influences to this design was the art work of  Gwenn Seemel. I had never heard of her before, but was fascinated by her background, her artwork, and her subject matter. She is primarily a portrait painter, and the majority of her subjects are women. She created a children's book addressing gender issues. In it she points out how some animals take on different gender roles than humans, and how that is considered normal in the animal kingdom. I loved her message, its connection to the play, and the vibrancy of her artwork. She paints in bold colors and with geometric pattern and line.