THE seeds of American human rights activist Eve Ensler's trio of short plays, The Fruit Trilogy, were sown in last May's A Play, A Pie And A Pint season at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

From that initial Barber Studio premiere of Avocado – commissioned by the Leeds theatre – has grown two more works, Pomegranate and Coconut, that combine to explore human trafficking, sexual abuse, refugee life and body image and collectively give a voice to ordinary women.

Directed by Playhouse associate director Mark Rosenblatt, The Fruit Trilogy made its debut at WOW, the Southbank Centre's Women of the World festival in London last month and will run in Leeds all this week.

"I'm thrilled that The Fruit Trilogy is having its premiere at Southbank and the West Yorkshire Playhouse," says Eve, who is best known for her global hit The Vagina Monologues. "Both organisations have given platform and voice to the pressing issues of women today: trafficking, war, violence, and commodification. They're the perfect venues for these new plays and monologues where women are struggling with bodies sold, enslaved, violated and reclaimed."’ Performed by Amelia Donkor and Carla Harrison-Hodge, Pomegranate takes place on a regular working day in the life of a brothel, as seen through the eyes of two women for sale, who face another morning on the shelf. Avocado follows a young woman’s chaotic, shocking but poetic journey towards freedom; Coconut sees a survivor begin to connect with the one thing she has never fully owned, her body, from the bliss of her bathroom.

"Eve’s playwriting and activism are inextricably linked and this new work asks us to confront some of the darkest of situations facing women around the world today, but always with a playful theatricality, humanity and humour," says Mark. "We always enter the situation through an unexpected angle and that’s really exciting to put on stage."

Mark reports that The Fruit Trilogy "really struck a chord" at the Southbank Centre. "Audiences found the plays very powerful. Avocado is disturbing and the other two are balanced against it, still dark but quite surreal, and ultimately the last piece has more hope to it, looking forward to what might be, rather than what is."

Mark played his part in shaping the trilogy. "When we were first doing Avocado for the A Play, A Pie And A Pint project, originally it had another name but then Eve came up with 'Avocado' and I said, 'maybe we could do a trilogy of plays with fruits in the title', and she said did have a couple in mind for that," he says.

"Pomegranate is about sexual slavery, where two women feel almost cut off from their bodies because of what they've experienced, whereas Coconut is all about a woman reclaiming her body, and liberating it, having not felt it was her own."

The Fruit Trilogy, Barber Studio, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, tonight until Saturday, 8pm. Box office: 0113 213 7700 or at wyp.org.uk