(Santa Ana) - Santa Ana College (SAC) is set to stage Eve Ensler’s Necessary Targets on Thursday, November 1 at 2:30 p.m.; Friday, November 2 at 8:00 p.m.; and Saturday, November 3 at 8:00 p.m. General admission is $8; students/seniors/staff tickets are $6. The play will be produced in the newly renovated Black Box Theatre at Santa Ana College.
Written by Eve Ensler, the author of The Vagina Monologues, the play is the story of two American women, a Park Avenue psychiatrist and a human rights worker, who go to Bosnia to help women confront their memories of war. The play was inspired by a 1993 trip that Ensler made to the former Yugoslavia to interview Bosnian women war refugees.
“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 often on bombs and the loss of lives and property. According to the author, little media attention is given to the aftermath of war on the people living in other countries. “But after the bombing,” Ensler continues, “that's when the real war begins.”
Necessary Targets is directed by Chris Cannon, SAC assistant professor of theatre.
“Necessary Targets is really about how Americans struggle with the realization that the people who suffer in foreign wars are somehow different from us, but the truth is what happened to them could easily happen here,” said Cannon.
The cast of Necessary Targets features:
From Santa Ana, CA: Molly Gorman [Nuna]
From Santa Ana, CA: Ana Belen Reyes [Zlata]
From Santa Ana, CA: Amy Hallas [J.S.]
From Santa Ana, CA: Natalia Gutierrez [Seada]
From Santa Ana, CA: Almendra Camero [Azra]
From Garden Grove, CA: Sandra De Los Santos [Jelena]
From Santa Ana, CA: Kelly Caballero [Melissa]
Melissa, an ambitious young writer and civil rights worker, and J.S., a successful but unsatisfied middle-aged psychiatrist, have nothing in common beyond the methods they have been taught to distance themselves from their clients. As J.S. begins to feel compassion for the women whose tragedies she has been sent to expose, she turns to Melissa, who finds safety in control. In an unexpected moment of revelation, J.S. and the women she is supposedly treating find a common ground—a place for mutual understanding and learning. Necessary Targets is a play about women and war, about the violence of dark memories and the enduring resilience of the human spirit.
For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit www.sac.edu/theatre or call (714) 564-5661.
About Santa Ana College
Santa Ana College (SAC), which will turn 100 years old in 2015, serves about 18,000 students each semester at its main campus in Santa Ana. The college prepares students for transfer to four-year institutions, provides invaluable workforce training, and customized training for business and industry. In addition, another 13,000 students are served through the college’s School of Continuing Education located at Centennial Education Center. Ranked as one of the nation’s top two-year colleges awarding associate degrees to Latino and Asian students, the college is also recognized throughout the state for its comprehensive workforce training programs for nurses, firefighters, law enforcement and other medical personnel. SAC is one of two comprehensive colleges under the auspices of the Rancho Santiago Community College District. Visit www.sac.edu to learn more.
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