Necessary Targets

January 22, 2001
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.

June 1, 2000
Move over, Vagina Monologues. You may be a hit play, but Obie Award-winning playwright Ensler has another drama in store. This one opens on Broadway in the fall with the likes of Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, and Calista Flockhart and is set partly in New York and partly in Sarajevo.

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2000
Having been performed in 20 cities and on 200 campuses, the Obie Award-winning Vagina Monologues is here updated with testimonials and three new monoogs. Necessary Targets, which concerns violence against women during the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina, has already played with all-star casts on Broadway and in Sarajevo.

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2001
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 victims--women 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 women--one a Park Avenue psychiatrist and the other an international activist--who 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.--Ed.]--Laura A. Ewald, Murray State Univ. Lib., KS

Copyright 2001 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.