“Soft Target”
Detroit Public Theatre
Detroit, Mich.
May 2, 2025
Something is off about the characters in “Soft Target.” Why is Jonah shuffling awkwardly across the floor? What’s up with Molly’s Barbie hands and legs that don’t bend? And why does Di have sticky notes on her back with pants that look like they’ve been scribbled on by a child? Once you realize that they are actually children’s toys, their characterization turns from awkward to brilliant.
“Soft Target” is a new play by Emily Kaczmarek that tackles gun violence in schools through the story of 9-year-old Amanda and her bedroom toys. There’s her stuffed penguin Jonah, American Girl Doll Molly, her diary (a.k.a. Di), and a weighted emotional support bunny Amanda named Ugly. “Soft Target” had its world premier at Detroit Public Theatre on April 30 and runs through June 8.
Without giving too much away, after a deadly shooting at her school, Amanda just isn’t herself and her toys struggle to get her back to normal. Using a child’s toys to explore how children might process trauma is a clever choice. The play starts with penguin Jonah, Molly the doll, and Di wondering why Amanda has been sleeping for so long.
As the play goes along, you start to notice the attention to detail that went into the character development. Jonah has worn clothes with tufts of his stuffing poking out. We later learn that Amanda’s dad bought him on the way to the hospital for her birth, and he’s been with her ever since. No wonder he’s so anxiety-ridden and worried about Amanda.
Sometimes the play is hard to watch — especially when Amanda makes the toys recreate the shooting with Ugly as “the boy with the gun.” I never thought that I’d feel so much empathy for a stuffed bunny being neglected by his owner, or that the thought of a girl’s diary being cut to shreds would make me cry. With the personification of Di almost as Amanda’s therapist, knowing that she was going to “die” was unsettling. Watching Ugly be immediately damned and discarded by Amanda was like witnessing a bully and its helpless victim.
But the reality is even harder to swallow. Between 2009 and 2018 the U.S. averaged six school shootings every two and a half months, while Canada, France, Japan, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom only had a combined total of five school shootings during that time. There have already been 18 school shootings in the U.S. this year, including 12 on college campuses and six at K-12 schools, as of May 1.
Inevitably, there comes a point in all of our lives where our childhood innocence is shattered and we awake to the horrors of the world. But what do we do when that loss of innocence comes in such a horrific way at a young age? “Soft Target” shows us, in the end, that we have to lean on each other to make it through. Parents may not always have the tools for dealing with gun violence, as there is no magic wand to make grief disappear, and they already have their own humanness to grapple with. Maybe we turn to our peers for support. Or perhaps, we wait for the rainbow in the rain that will eventually come to wash it all away.
“Soft Target” is at the Detroit Public Theatre until Sunday, June 8. For more information and tickets, see detroitpublictheatre.org.
Published in partnership with Detroit Metro Times.
