The Vagina Monologues. Heard of them? That is the 1996 play that made Eve Ensler famous, and sent her on a tour around the world performing the show herself, as she originally had in New York. Ultimately, through hearing the stories of many women in many countries, it led her to the decision to use the play as a platform for discussing and combatting violence against women, allowing all productions of the play to be licensed for free, but using the play to raise money for her V-Day organization, with multiple anti-violence campaigns around the world. Now, Ensler is back with a new play with a similarly ambitious mission, and one that is less personal than her most recent work, The Good Body. It's called Emotional Creature, and it just had its world premiere last week at Berkeley Rep.

Emotional Creature is about teenage girls — their fears, insecurities, body issues, and the process of coming into their own as women. But it also covers a lot of other territory, through monologues, song, and dance, a lot of it catchy, invigorating, and compelling. The cast comprises six young women, all of whom look to be under the age of 20. The ensemble feels tight-knit, earnest to the core, and when the choreography calls for it, they move in step with an ease that feels practiced if not overly polished. They feel like real girls, in other words, who happen to have woken up in a dream-world where they can lay their thoughts bare, and where a soundtrack and a group of backup singers are always there to help. Director Jo Bonney should be credited with that ease and with the high energy throughout. There are two African-American girls who oscillate both between being American, and putting on accents to portray African girls too. There's a Middle Eastern girl who tells a powerful story about being forced to get a nose job so she can be prettier, even though she liked being the ugly funny one. There's an earnest, tall white girl who opens the show with a story of desperation to fit in and be accepted in the school cafeteria, even though she's not funny or pretty or charismatic enough. There's an Asian-American girl who at one point delivers a monologue as a Chinese factory worker making slave wages while putting the hair on Barbies. And there's a petite, tomboyish girl who fills the lesbian seat on this high court of girlhood.

As a musical geared toward young women, it mostly works. Though we can't be sure modern American teenagers would necessarily relish the idea of being taught to love themselves in this contemporary, Free to Be... You and Me style, we're certain that most of them would secretly find moments to identify with throughout the piece. Ensler is a master of naked truth-telling and crafting compelling, internal dramas that make you laugh just moments before they cut clean through the skin. It's a play that wants these girls to feel validated, to know that their insecurities and pains are universal, and, basically, that it gets better. And quite a few of the musical numbers, including the closing title number "Emotional Creature," resonate with Rent-esque pop harmonies and edgy lyrics. (The original music and musical direction are by Charl-Johan Lingenfelder.)

But as a play, it falters a bit by the second half due to Ensler's arguable overreaching with the scope of of its message. As an international crusader for a very big and often tragic cause, Ensler is understandably influenced by the stories that she knows of systemic rape and genital mutilation in the Congo, of sexual slavery in Russia, and all the myriad ways that women and girls are victimized across the planet. Putting all those stories into one framework, especially one that is titled Emotional Creature and seems at the outset to be more generally about the tribulations of Western teenage girls in the First World, feels a bit confusing, and causes unintended conflicts for the viewer. It's hard to know where to prioritize the very real pain of a fifteen-year-old American girl whose friends have ostracized her for no apparent reason when its placed next to a girl forcibly raped over years by a soldier in sub-Saharan Africa and impregnated. These pains are not equivalent, and yet the play seems to ask us to see them as such — both girls being, at base, emotional creatures.

The play is already scheduled to open Off-Broadway in New York in November, at the Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre at the Pershing Square Signature Center. Perhaps, by then, it will have a touch more focus.

Emotional Creature plays at Berkeley Rep through July 15. $15 rush tickets are available just before each performance for high school students with valid student IDs. Purchase tickets here.