J.S.'s Apartment

The apartment is the setting for the first and final scenes of the play, bookending the trauma and the squalor of the internal Bosnian scenes with scenes of relative safety, security and wealth. The apartment can also be seen as representing J.S.'s comfort zone, the level of communication and experience within which she feels secure operating. In Scene 1, for example, her life and work and beliefs and understanding seem to come easily to her. At the end of the play, however, when she returns to this setting, she no longer feels comfortable in these external circumstances because her inner, emotional circumstances have changed so completely. Her physical home is no longer her spiritual home, which it was at the beginning of the play.

New York City

J.S.'s apartment is located in New York City, a source of physical and spiritual...