Necessary Targets
by Eve Ensler

Necessary Targets Book Cover
Necessary Targets Cover

Synopsis

In her first new work since The Vagina Monologues, her Obie Award-winning smash hit, Eve Ensler tells the story of two American women, a Park Avenue psychiatrist and a human rights worker, who go to Bosnia to help women confront their memories of war and emerge deeply changed themselves.

Necessary Targets is a groundbreaking play about women and war—about the violence of dark memories and the enduring resilience of the human spirit.

Melissa, an ambitious young writer, and J.S., a successful but unsatisfied middle-aged psychiatrist, have nothing in common beyond the methods they have been taught to distance themselves from other people.

As J.S. begins to feel compassion for the women whose tragedies she has been sent to expose, she turns on Melissa, who finds safety in control.

In an unexpected moment of revelation, J.S. and the women she is supposedly treating find a common ground, a place to be taught and a place to learn.

Necessary Targets has been staged in New York by Meryl Streep, Anjelica Huston, and Calista Flockhart, and performed in Sarajevo with Glenn Close and Marisa Tomei.

Press Reviews

"…a bold and provocative theme for Ms. Ensler…artistically introspective…bristles with enough tantalizing topics to fuel a year's worth of symposiums…“ —The New York Times. ”Rather than elegantly personifying the psychological repercussions of war, [Ensler's] characters behave like ordinary people under extraordinary duress…Ensler's straightforward intensity and delicate comic relief make [her characters' plight] absorbing and moving."

— USA Today

Publication

Year 2001
Binding Paperback
Edition 1
Pages 122
Place New York
Language English
ISBN-13 9780375756030
ISBN-10 0375756035
eISBN-13 9780375506604
LCCN 38223
LCC PS3555.N75 N43 2001
DCC 812/.54

Necessary Targets is a American play written by Eve Ensler and published by Dramatists Play Service in New York (2001).

Digital editions available on Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, Google Play (eISBN 9780375506604).

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