Eve Ensler to Launch EveEnsler.org, 4/16

Eve Ensler, the Tony Award^®-winning playwright, performer, activist, and author of the international sensation The Vagina Monologues, today announced her new website www.eveensler.org, launching on Monday, April 16.  The site serves as a virtual home base for Ensler's creative works, including a comprehensive archive of her extensive articles, essays, books, plays, films, documentaries, and speeches, as well as up to the moment information on her activities. 

The site launches in advance of Ensler's next theatrical production, Emotional Creature.  The play will have its world premiere at Berkeley Rep June 14 – July July 15, 2012.  Staged by Obie Award-winning director Jo Bonney, Emotional Creature is made up of original monologues - and irresistible songs - about and for girls.  Placing their stories squarely center stage, it gives full expression to their secret voices and innermost thoughts, highlighting the diversity and commonality of the issues they face.  Emotional Creature is a call, a reckoning, an education, an act of empowerment for girls, and an illumination for parents and for us all.  In August 2010 Emotional Creature was first workshopped at New York Stage and Film at Vassar College with subsequent workshops in Johannesburg, South Africa and Paris, France.  For more information, visit www.berkeleyrep.org.

Ensler's The Vagina Monologues has been translated into over 48 languages, performed in over 140 countries, including sold-out runs at both Off Broadway's Westside Theater and on London's West End (2002 Olivier Award nomination, Best Entertainment), and has run for 10 years in Mexico City and Paris.   Ensler founded V-Day in 1998 and today the non-profit is a global movement to end violence against women and girls that has raised over $85 million for local anti-violence groups.  V-Day activities and actions can continue to be found at vday.org. 

In addition to her activities as a playwright and performer, Ensler has written numerous articles for The Guardian, Huffington Post, Washington Post, Utne Reader, International Herald Tribune, Glamour Magazine, and Marie Claire.  She was awarded the 2011 Isabelle Stevenson Tony Award, which recognizes an individual from the theater community who has made a substantial contribution of volunteered time and effort on behalf of humanitarian, social service, or charitable organizations.  Other awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwriting and an Obie, in addition to a number of honorary degrees.

In November 2009, Ensler was named one of US News & World Report's "Best Leaders" in association with the Center for Public Leadership (CPL) at Harvard Kennedy School.  In 2010 she was named one of "125 Women Who Changed Our World" by Good Housekeeping Magazine.  In 2011 she was named one of Newsweek's "150 Women Who Changed the World" and The Guardian's "100 Most Influential Women."  Ensler's experience performing The Vagina Monologues inspired her to create V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls.  She has devoted her life to stopping violence, envisioning a planet in which women and girls will be free to thrive, rather than merely survive.