“Real Women Have Curves” is a play that entertains and challenges. Entirely based within the factory sweatshop run by 24-year-old Estela (Daisy K. Espinosa) we are asked to see the outside world — men, capitalism and social pressures — through the eyes of four women.

“Girls shouldn’t know so much,” Carmen said to the other four women in the sweatshop.

Education leading to women’s liberation is a central theme in the script. The youngest character, Ana, is 18 and works in her older sister’s Los Angeles factory. Ana’s dream is to be a writer and to go to college, but until she can apply for financial aid, she is working in the shop. Ana, convincingly played by Ethel Birrell, provides a narrative to the story, and a perspective from which the audience can come.

Ana guides us into a sticky world of hard-working women in L.A. in 1987 who are asked to be and do too much at once. Espinosa’s character personifies this pressure. The increasingly stressed Estela attempts to run a business where her dresses earn her $13 and are sold in Bloomingdale’s for $200. Ana tries to support her sister, but can only urge her to stand up to Estela’s only client for money. Espinosa, a junior media communications major, does a fine job in her debut performance, despite tendencies towards overacting.

Adding to Estela’s impossible situation is her overbearing mother. Carmen, beautifully executed by J. Andrea YaYa Porras, is the lively, vivacious Mexican mother many would want. After eight children, Carmen is still going strong.

Determined and stubborn, she rubs her two daughters the wrong way, leading to many spicy scenes. Porras clinches the vocal habits of Carmen, pulling every audience member to her. While many could pity her, she casually sidesteps tragic moments with her laughter. Carmen is not a perfect person. In fact, it is her faults that we come to love that are effortlessly placed in the script by Josifina Lopez.

Alongside the trio of mother/daughters play the initially quiet Pancha (Christina Martinez) and Rosali (Sojourna Flores-Jennings). Rosali has her own secrets, but hides them behind her perennially sunny disposition. Martinez plays the older Pancha, providing a solid backboard for Birrell’s teenage outbursts, and her inner sadness comes though in the slump of her shoulders.

Confronting most of the major issues that women deal with — body image, employment, equality and relationships — the play speaks to the human experience. Additionally, Latina issues are addressed, with the women living in constant fear of being deported despite the fact that they all have recently received their green cards.

While the outside world is never shown to the audience — all scenes are placed in the factory — we slowly dawn upon the overwhelming pressures coming through the thin factory walls.

Carmen, wanting to be a good wife, is terrified that she might be pregnant again. Ana, feisty and clever, refuses this same future. Estela, drawn to a young man in the neighborhood, wants to be judged on her personality and intelligence, not her body. Pancha is bound by definitions of what a wife, and then presumed mother, should be. The “perfect body” that they are madly sewing for torments beautiful Rosali.

Director Manuel Jose Pickett obviously enjoyed directing the show and encouraged the actresses to develop their characters. He dedicates the play to his mother, who always taught him to be a better man.

Don’t miss “Real Women Have Curves.” It will make you feel empowered and entertained. It shows Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 8 pm, and Sunday at 2 pm. Tickets can be purchased through the University Box Office. (916) 278-4323.