Siena Heights’ theater program has an upcoming play called Necessary Targets.

It is based on a book written by Eve Ensler. It is about the aftermath of the 1990s war in Bosnia. It is the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Necessary Targets features a cast of seven females. It is a feminist point-of-view. The play is about two American women who go to help the five Bosnian refugees of the war.

Dan Walker, who is directing this play, says that women interact differently when helping each other.

“It’s a very softer, sort of like being there witnessing and listening,” Walker said of the play.

As for what drew him to this play, he says, “I was involved in the second or third production that was ever done of it.”

He said it holds a special place in his heart because of its feminist point of view.

“It’s an ensemble work for seven women. You don’t have a lot of plays that have all women characters. We did Catch Me If You Can which featured a lot of women on stage, but it’s not exactly feminist. The women were not very empowered in that,” Walker said.

While it is a darker play, Walker says that there is humor throughout the play to avoid “hammering the audience with death and despair.”

“It has the single most traumatic scene that I’ve ever dealt with on stage, and it ends with a joke,” Walker said.

The key factors that made Walker want to do this play were “the opportunity for the actors to work in a different way, the serious drama, and my interest in it timing wise politically. As a play, it’s a matter of watching these people get to work in a very intimate way, trying to act in this very natural way that when we do the big musicals it’s not like that. It’s much bigger, on a bigger stage, it’s purposely sort of heightened,” Walker said of the production.

“This translates more directly to the kind of stuff which we actually have more of in the world, which is realistic acting,” Walker continued. “It was a chance to put the women front and center, which doesn’t usually happen.”

Walker said he hopes to fill up the theater with this production. He hopes that the different style of production and the all-female cast will bring in a large audience.

“We have occasionally filled up the house when we do comedies, and when we do dramas like this, we will definitely be looking for an audience,” Walker said of the hopes to bring in a large audience.

It is a “modern” play and is an hour and 10 minutes with no intermission.

Necessary Targets is playing Nov. 7-9 at 7:30 p.m. each evening. Tickets are available to students and seniors for $6 and to adults for $8.