Playwright Eve Ensler, known for The Vagina Monologues went to Bosnia in 1995 to interview women caught up in the violent unraveling of the Balkans, specifically the Muslim refugees escaping Serb atrocities. Necessary Targets is the result. The South Florida-based Women's Theater Project gave it its southeastern U.S. premiere in August 2004 in a production so well received that it has been produced again by the same director and cast in a bigger venue. It hasn't lost a thing to time and space.
In the seven-woman play, the stories of the refugees are bracketed by short scenes of the Americans who are tasked with helping them: J.S., a Park Avenue therapist who has written books on anorexia, and Melissa, an ambitious trauma counselor -- "It's very specific training. I am not a therapist"-- with her first book contract.
Their first scene is awkward, but it becomes clear the awkwardness belongs to the characters, not the actresses, as soon as J.S. and Melissa meet the displaced women they're meant to help. All it takes is for Elayne Wilks (as the long-alone Azra, forced to abandon her goat and cow) to wave off some cliche with a dismissive hand gesture and turn of her head, and we know where real self-knowledge lies in this play.
Other characters share tales of rapes, beheadings, domestic violence, deadly accidents in scenes are wrenching under director Genie Croft and her cast, including Lacy Carter as Jelena of the troubled marriage; Meredith Lasher as a young mixed blood enamored of American pop culture; Jacqueline Laggy as a mother in deep denial over the death of her baby; and Kathy Ryan-Fores as Zlata, the former head of a hospital pediatrics unit who now is just another refugee.
The Bosnian accents are so consistent it's almost spooky. Audience members who haven't seen cast members in previous productions around South Florida might be forgiven if they thought the cast had been imported.
Lasher designed the cliche-free costumes for women of several generations. Tech director Carrie Kennedy delivers lighting that's subtle or sudden as need be. And the set -- twin cots for J.S. and Melissa, a larger playing area for the refugee camp backed by camouflage netting -- does what it needs to without any fuss.
The relationship between scientists-in-alien-circusmstances J.S. and Zlata emerges as the centerweight of Necessary Targets, but the last scene -- delivered in appropriate awkwardness by Bernhard as J.S., makes it clear there's no need to go halfway around the world to find the effects of trauma.
