Walking into the theater, I couldn't help but notice the stark difference between the set and the audience. The rusty garage door, haphazardly overturned wooden chairs, and scraps of chicken wire were decidedly at odds with the sea of red velvet in the house. It was this tension between the reality of the audience and the fictional world on the stage that was the most striking element of Eve Ensler's "Necessary Targets," which tells the story of two American therapists and five Bosnian women in a refugee camp in 1995.
When I attended a preview production of the play last week, I wasn't sure what to expect. The only work of Ensler's with which I was familiar was the infamous "The Vagina Monologues," a series of solo pieces tackling everything from the intricacies of the female orgasm to coping in the aftermath of rape.
When first hearing about "Necessary Targets," I automatically assumed that it would be similar in format — a group of monologues based on interviews with Bosnian refugees.
The play defied all of my preconceived notions, however. The story began with the arrival of an aging therapist, played by Tony-award-winning Shirley Knight, in the refugee camp. She joined Melissa (Catherine Kellner), another American who worked as an emergency trauma counselor, in a gov-ernment-sanctioned attempt to "help" the refugees come to terms with the horrid experiences of their recent past.
Wary of journalists (one character recalled reporters ordering, "Get me a girl who has been raped; preferably gang-raped, preferably young, preferably English-speaking"), the Bosnian women are slow to open up. Melissa alleges that part of their therapy is to be angry with the counselors. Victims their whole lives, these women must take their anger out somehow. We are the necessary targets for that anger, says Melissa.
Once dialogue starts between the two seemingly polar opposite sets of women, they realize that no one escapes from violence in the world. In the end, the story is just as much about the transformation of the American women as it is about the journey of their Bosnian counterparts.
An ad touted the play as "a story set 5,000 miles away that hits us right where we live." That distance of the action of the play is coupled with the powerful performances of the actresses to truly leave an indelible mark on the audience.
Knight is remarkable as a woman trying to rediscover herself late in life and Kellner is perfectly on-pitch as the overtly self-righteous yet internally uncertain counselor. The women potraying the refugees didn't allow the difficulty of contriving accents hinder their performances either, fully-fleshing out their characters despite coping with dialect challenges.
Because of the rawness of these performances, the play was, at points, incredibly uncomfortable to watch. In the climax of the story, one woman recounts an unimaginably painful experience from her past. The actress lacked all inhibition as her body was racked with sobs and she clawed animalistically at the ground. At this moment, some audiences members, like me, could be seen wiping away their steadily-falling tears while others simply shifted uncomfortably in their seats. That amount of pain on stage wasn't easy to view.
Truly imitating real life, not all of the characters neatly told their stories in monologue format. The plot wasn't neatly-packaged at the ending, where the audience gains some sense of completion with the theatrical resolution. In fact, there was a decidedly uncertain ending, with an unexpected final blackout. Had someone else not started the clapping, I probably wouldn't have even realized the play was over.
When I was exiting the theater, an usher offered the customary, "Hope you enjoyed the show," yet I don't think that reaction was the goal of the playwright.
The play affected and I think that's a much more powerful compliment to pay to the work as a whole than mere enjoyment.
My high school drama teacher first introduced me to the early 20th century German playwright Bertolt Bretch's proposal that one isn't supposed to get entirely caught up in the fantasy of fiction, thereby losing all sense of watching a play. You shouldn't go to "Les Miserables," willingly suspend your disbelief for duration of the show, then ignore a homeless man as you leave the theater. After two and a half hours sympathizing with the plight of the poor, you are supposed be able to make the leap from the French Revolution to contemporary New York. You can't relegate the message of the work to the fictional realm. You must carry it with you.
Don't leave the message of a socially-aware show behind with the litter of playbills on the floor. Carry it with you as you re-enter reality.
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