'Necessary Targets': A Reason for Revisiting Bosnia

If I told you that Oscar-winning film actresses such as Meryl Streep, Anjelica Huston, and Vanessa Redgrave were so interested in performing an Eve Ensler play that they would participate in staged readings, you probably wouldn't react with surprise. After all, Ensler wrote The Vagina Monologues, one of the most popular plays of this or any other time, which was translated in 45 languages and performed in more than 119 countries. What might surprise you, though, is that it wasn't Vagina that Streep, Huston, and Redgrave appeared in. It was another Ensler play, Necessary Targets. And while local theatres such as the Paramount and Zach Theatre were quick to jump on the Vagina bandwagon, Targets will receive its Austin premiere from a community theatre, the Paradox Players.

While you might not have heard of them, the Players have been around for close to 10 years. "We actually started as a readers' theatre, and we still have an active one," says P. Paullette MacDougal, one of Paradox's co-founders and its artistic director. "We are a community theatre. We are all volunteers. We don't look for grants, so we are entirely dependent upon ticket sales. We can produce quality theatre because up to 50 people volunteer for every production."

The Players draw full and often sold-out houses for their stagings of mostly classic American plays in the theatre at the First Universalist Unitarian Church. But, cautions MacDougal: "We are not just a 'church theatre'; we are a community theatre that performs in a church. Our advisory board; our actors, like Bob Brody; and our directors, like Charles Hill, Gary Payne, and Karen Jambon, come from the Austin theatre community. Some belong to the church, some do not, but it's a wonderful partnership we have with the church."

For Targets, a story about a psychiatrist and a trauma specialist who, at the behest of a presidential commission, go to Bosnia to counsel refugees, the Players recruited recent Austin transplant Chris Jimmerson to direct. Jimmerson cut his theatrical chops in Houston, founding Unhinged Productions and directing more than a few plays for Stages Repertory Theatre. Perhaps more than anyone else the Players could have chosen for the job, Jimmerson has a quite personal take on the play. That's because of his day job, working for the Political Asylum Project of Austin. "We provide attorneys and legal assistance for immigrants who have a legal reason to be in the U.S. but can't afford a private attorney to go through all the legal maneuvering to get their documentation," he says.

Although Bosnia recently came back into the news because of the presidential election, the immediate relevance of the play might not be entirely obvious – after all, that war happened more than a decade ago – unless you speak with Jimmerson. "I think one of the themes of the play is how we as Americans view ourselves in the world and how that view very often does not at all match how the rest of the world views us as Americans.

"And I would say that's very much going on right now."

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Necessary Targets runs June 13-29, Friday-Saturday, 8pm; Sunday, 3pm, in Howson Theatre Hall of the First Unitarian Universalist Church, 4700 Grover. For more information, call 744-1495 or visit www.paradoxplayers.org.