Former First Lady and current Senator from New York Hillary Rodham Clinton — who knows something about being a political target — will participate in a panel discussion following the March 24 Off Broadway matinee performance of Eve Ensler's Necessary Targets.
Clinton will take a seat next to Ensler herself, as well as journalist and author Linda Ellerbee and PBS president and CEO Pat Mitchell. The event is part of a series called "Necessary Talks."
Understandably, security will be tight at the event. Only people holding tickets for the 3 PM performance will be allowed to attend the post-show discussion, and all must enter the theatre prior to the show. There will be no late seating.
Ellerbee has starred in Ensler's The Vagina Monologues. Clinton, meanwhile, is not the first female political figure to be connected to an Ensler work; former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani's erstwhile wife, Donna Hanover, put in a much publicized stint in Off-Broadway's The Vagina Monologues.
* The Bosnia-based, socio-political drama Necessary Targets opened at Off-Broadway's Variety Arts on Feb. 28. The cast features Shirley Knight (as J.S.) and Catherine Kellner (Melissa), alongside Diane Venora (Zlata), Alyssa Bresnahan (Jelena), Sally Parrish (who took over for Rosemary Murphy in rehearsals) (Azra), and Maria Thayer (Nuna), all of whom appeared in the original Hartford Stage staging. New to the New York cast is Mirjana Jokovic, taking over for Marika Dominczyk as Seada. Hartford Stage artistic director Michael Wilson again directs.
Targets is based on interviews Ensler conducted, Anna Devere Smith-like, with women who survived the atrocities and warfare which reigned during the 1990s in the states which made up the former Yugoslavia — a conflict which was known for the use of sexual violence against women as a war tactic. From these conversations, Ensler shaped a drama about two American women who, somewhat like the playwright herself, travel to Bosnia to help female victims confront their experiences. One character is a Park Avenue psychiatrist, the other a young writer.
For tickets ($60) and information on Necessary Targets at the Variety Arts Theatre, 110 Third Ave., call (212) 239-6200.
—By Robert Simonson
