Necessary Targets by Eve Ensler | Introduction & Overview

Necessary Targets Introduction

Eve Ensler's Necessary Targets, first produced in 1996 (and later published by Villard Books in 2001), was inspired by the author's trip to the former Yugoslavia. Ensler went there to interview Bosnian women war refugees. It was from Ensler's experience with these women that Necessary Targets was born. “When we think of war,” Ensler writes in the introduction to her published play, “we think of it as something that happens to men.” The focus is on bombs and the immediate destruction that they wreak. Little media attention or conscious thought on the part of people living in other countries is focused on the aftermath of war. “But after the bombing,” Ensler continues, “that's when the real war begins.” Ensler wrote Necessary Targets in an attempt to change this focus.

In Bosnia, Ensler met women who were forced to deal with the aftermath of war, and it was their...
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