Anna Bella Eema

by Lisa D'Amour

Ten year old Anna Bella and her hermetic mother Irene live in a ratty trailer on the edge of town. When their trailer park is slated for demolition because of interstate highway expansion, Irene refuses to leave. In this moment of crisis, Anna Bella creates a new girl out of the mud behind their trailer home. This mud-girl helps Anna Bella and Irene channel the supernatural and face the life they must live in the world outside their trailer home. A richly imagined tale of a fierce mother / daughter bond, spoken and sung by three women.

Genres: Plays

55 pages, Paperback

Reviews

[Martin Denton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lisa D'Amour's Anna Bella Eema is a contemporary fairy tale in which a little girl journeys from an isolated childhood to the hopeful, if melancholy, brink of adulthood. Because it's a fairy tale, the characters include a magical raccoon, owl, and fox who are actually fantastical transmogrifications of the girl's mother, as well as a spectral child (the title character) created out of mud by the girl's active imaginings.

Because it's contemporary, the challenges our young heroine must face down include her agoraphobic, probably insane mother, who has barricaded her little family within a dilapidated trailer; the construction workers who are trying to convert the one-time trailer park to a new interstate highway (one of whom is the Frankenstein Monster--see preceding paragraph); and her own impending adolescence: Anna Bella Eema is nothing if not forthright about its themes, with the girl's first menstrual blood among the numerous fluids and organs that take on symbolic purpose here.

Now, I find this kind of theater purposeless: I left not knowing why D'Amour wanted to tell me this story. D'Amour is clearly a talented writer: there are striking passages and themes sprinkled throughout that really made me sit up and take notice. But mostly, Anna Bella Eema felt alien to me: its stylized storytelling methods are as far-removed from my own experience as its heroine's strange lurching toward adulthood.

[Emmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw this play back when I was in college, and it blew my mind. It's been about ten years since then, so I thought I'd read it. And I'm not sure if I missed something the first time or if I'm just in a different headspace now, but I found the play to be much darker than I remembered, and definitely more unsettling.

The story follows a reclusive woman named Irene and her daughter, Anna Bella. One day, Anna Bella creates a girl from the mud, and everything starts to change.

I think at the core of the story, it's about a woman struggling with mental illness, the potential loss of her home, and her daughter's budding maturity. But, I really loved how D'Amour presents the story in such a way that you cannot tell if this is really a tale of mental illness or if it's actually magic. No, I don't think that Frankenstein and vampires are showing up at the trailer, and I doubt that Anna Bella Eema really exists, but there's that scene towards the end where Irene becomes a wolf, and Anna Bella comes away with a fistful of hair...

So, my final thoughts? I'm not sure. The performance I had seen was excellent, and the read-through was really good...but, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it as a whole.

[Brigid Amos · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard this play as a staged reading by Angels Theatre Company, and then asked to take the script home to read it over. It is really a great read, as it is so language rich. Another reason is that it is written for three women sitting at TV tables throughout, so really the stage directions are rolled into the text and the physical action is described by the characters. Not all plays are enjoyable to read separate from a production or staged reading in this way.

[Beverley Sylvester · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetic, wild, feral, raw, twisted, and powerful. This is a play about growing up, mental illness, perception, imagination, puberty, poverty, independence, love, and so many other things. It is strange and wonderful.

[Adri B · Rating 5 out of 5]

I mean I’m doing my thesis about it so