Necessary Targets: A Story of Women and War [Paperback]

Eve Ensler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 23, 2001

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Ensler's sober new play may seem like an unexpected astringent after her celebrity-studded performance piece and book, The Vagina Monologues, an alternately piercing and raucous series of vignettes that dramatize women's conflicts over body image and sexuality that continues to be performed around the country. Here, Ensler's major theme is the lingering effects of violence against women. Two American women--a well-heeled New York psychiatrist and her younger colleague--travel to a refugee camp intending to help Bosnian women "tell their stories" after the brutal war in Yugoslavia. Inexperienced in the field, the doctor learns to stop patronizing and start listening, while her more brittle companion retreats into therapeutic jargon. "When we think of war, we think of it as something that happens to men in fields or jungles," says the award-winning playwright in her introduction. "But after the bombing, after the snipers, that's when the real war begins." Though deeply political, Ensler's work has no ideological axes to grind, nor does it linger sensationally on rape stories. Spare, self-reflexive and powerful, the play zeroes in on the real postwar conflict: the refugees' contempt for bland, professional talk therapy--and their overwhelming need, at the same time, for help in absorbing the damages. Agent, Charlotte Sheedy. (Feb. 2)Forecast: Though Ensler's new subject matter is darker and less familiar to American women than that of The Vagina Monologues (which sold more than 60,000 copies), Ensler knows her audience and how to attract attention (she appeared on Oprah last fall). Her five-city tour and print campaign targeting college newspapers, in addition to the play's opening in New York in March 2001, will ensure that her devotees take notice.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Playwright and activist Ensler has won numerous awards for her work, including the 1997 Obie Award for her play, The Vagina Monologues, and a Guggenheim in 1999. Here she presents a moving play that puts faces on the mind-numbing statistics of often-forgotten war victimsDwomen who have survived the trauma of rape, depression, poverty, homelessness, and starvation only to be forgotten by most of the world in the aftermath of war. Necessary Targets is the story of two American womenDone a Park Avenue psychiatrist and the other an international activistDwho travel to Bosnia to help women refugees deal with their memories of war and come home irrevocably changed themselves. Performed by all-star casts from New York to Sarajevo, Necessary Targets tells an important story of survival and coping that will move readers and audiences alike. Recommended for academic and public libraries. [Villard will also be releasing a special hardcover edition of The Vagina Monologues in February; both books were previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/00.DEd.]DLaura A. Ewald, Murray State Univ. Lib., K.
-DLaura A. Ewald, Murray State Univ. Lib., KS
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Villard; 1 edition (January 23, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375756035
• ISBN-13: 978-0375756030
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.3 x 7.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #479,470 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Eve Ensler is the author of THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES, a theatrical and publishing sensation that has sold over half a million copies worldwide and has been translated into twenty-seven languages. Winner of a Guggenheim and Obie award, she is co-founder and guiding spirit of V-day, an international movement to fight violence against women (see vday.org). She lives in New York City.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Words can never describe war, but Ensler comes close, March 11, 2002

By 

SEP "sepowe" (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Necessary Targets: A Story of Women and War (Paperback)

My first read left me disappointed because I thought it was a flimsy account of war, but finally Necessary Targets began to grow on me. I think it's ingenious that Ensler tells the story from an American perspective. As an American woman, I've never spent a single day or night in the midst of a warzone--and bombs and shells are a minute portion of what Bosnian women endured. Melissa's distance and J.S.'s transformation make it very clear how removed we Americans can be from the attrocities of war. Ensler is right--we only think about the bombs, bloodshed, and battles. Because the media tends to ignore the drudgeries and aftermaths, we do as well. Maybe I thought at first that this play was missing the noisy, concrete aspects of war. But it's the abstract--the emotional and mental damage--that people need to consider. Ensler brings that aspect of war hauntingly close with this play.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Mother Goddess for A Care-Hungry World, November 10, 2004

By 

N E Hetrick "celt33" (Westland, MI United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Necessary Targets: A Story of Women and War (Paperback)

I was fortunate enough to see this play performed live, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I was already an Eve Ensler fan, having performed myself in a college production of The Vagina Monologues, but I am also a harsh theatre critic, attending 8 or more professional productions a year (for the last 15 years) and often finding them lacking. Neccessary Targets is one of the best plays I have ever had the honor of finding myself engaged in. The characters are female archetypes we are all famillar with, and yet they each have their own unique stories. During the course of the play, they find themselves stomping bravely or furiously down paths they never even supposed were out there, hovering just off the beaten track...leaving the geographically familliar for the foreign, the psycholgically comforting for the disruptive, finding peace in sorrow, and joy in chaos. For anyone wishing to expand their understanding of how women in the global South or women in war-torn nations subsist psychologicaly--this is your play. Eve Ensler is a goddess. In this play, her creations range from an elderly woman who longs for her long-gone beloved cow, to a teenage mother, unwilling to acknowledge the loss of her newborn infant, from an uptight/urban therapist who needs to learn how to feel compassion and forget about wrinkle-free clothes, to a freedom-fighting hiking-boot-wearing all 'round adventurer with an intense insecurity complex. It's a must read and a must see.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Of women and war, November 11, 2001

By 

Michael J. Mazza - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Necessary Targets: A Story of Women and War (Paperback)

Eve Ensler's "Necessary Targets" is a thought-provoking play. In her introduction, Ensler notes that, in 1993, she traveled to the former Yugoslavia in order to interview female war refugees. This play evokes the lives of those displaced women.

The play deals with two American women: Melissa, a writer and trauma counselor, and J.S., a psychiatrist. They travel to Bosnia and hold group sessions with several women, of various ages, who have become refugees as a result of the wall. Their conversations are at times tense, funny, or painful.

"Necessary Targets" is a compelling depiction of a cross-cultural encounter. Throughout the play there was, in my mind, a question: Are Melissa and J.S. helping these women, or merely exploiting them to further their own agendas? Also interesting is Ensler's exploration of perceptions of the U.S. and Americans held by people from other nations.

In her introduction, Ensler notes, "When we think of war, we think of it as something that happens to men in fields or jungles." Thus, this play is a valuable window into the female world of war.