Scene 1 Summary

This play tells the story of a pair of American women, one a therapist and the other a researcher, as they develop relationships with a diverse group of female refugees from the ethnic civil war that raged in Bosnia in the late 1990s. Written after a period of intense research in Bosnia, the play explores themes of violence, loneliness and pretense, developing them within a context of personal transformation in the face of despair.

This scene takes place in J.S.'s apartment in New York. Melissa, a young trauma counselor and writer, has come to be interviewed by J.S., a middle-aged female psychiatrist. J.S. is looking for an assistant to take with her to Bosnia, where she is to work with a presidential commission to investigate trauma suffered by female refugees from the ethnic civil war there. Melissa is nervous...