Anne-Liese Juge's one-woman show Ego Rites was partly inspired by seeing the tabloid headline "Wonder Woman in Rehab." The New Orleanean performance artist recalls thinking, "If Wonder Woman can't make it, who can?"

Juge's show, which has garnered favour-able reviews at the San Francisco and New Orleans Fringe festivals, looks at rites of passage, or the lack thereof, for girls in the modern world. Being a child of the '70s, Juge looked to TV for role models but found most of them problematic. She liked the heroines of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie because they had magical powers, but not the fact that both were still under the control of a man. Samantha's husband would get all uptight if she actually used her powers and Jeannie "was like a pet" in that little bottle of hers.

Wonder Woman, on the other hand, was her own boss. She was a powerful female figure who stood for justice and peace. Plus, she had those cool bracelets. Ego Rites tries to tie in pop culture icons like Wonder Woman with ancient myths.

"I was trying to find what fragments we have left today of female power and tie them in to the goddesses of, for instance, Sumerian creation myths," says the performer.

Ego Rites was created out of improv and by using her own experiences, stories from friends and even, to some extent, feedback from previous audiences. It has been seen at the San Francisco Fringe and ran in New Orleans immediately before arriving here.

Juge has worked all over the place, in all kinds of forms. She studied experimental theatre, mask and mime in Paris, she worked with a San Francisco company devoted to traditional Japanese theatrical forms, and then there's the musical theatre she loved as a kid. Juge calls Ego Rites, "a casserole of all the forms I've done."

During her five years in Paris, Juge became fluent enough in French to work in stage and television there. "Being from New Orleans, I always had a strong connection to French culture."

She stresses that Ego Rites is an American show, all in English except for a short bit in Cajun French. "Had I known earlier I'd be doing the Montreal Fringe, I think I would have planned to do some shows in French only," says Juge. If we'll have her back, she says she'll definitely perform in French "next time." :

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