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The most socially ambitious play that I have read is “Ruined”, about life in war-torn Congo, written by Lynn Nottage and directed by Kate Whoriskey. It has won much acclaim, including the Pulitzer Prize, and I would recommend it to anyone. However, I don’t think it a ‘re-readable’ for me. It scores much of its points on subject-matter, and I think that was its main objective or mission, to introduce this controversial subject to a bigger audience of complacent Westerners, even though raising consciences seldom changes anything in the world, except maybe to raise some more charitable funds. This excerpt is from Whoriskey’s introductory remarks, relating the nature of the social background that makes Congo a hell on earth.
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Like many people who perpetrate sexual crimes, the men and boys who raped were themselves victims of unspeakable violence. Rebels interested in recruiting more soldiers would invade family houses and make boys kill their parents in order to save themselves. These boys became so damaged they would join the rebel group that forced them to make this unconscionable choice. When I spoke to Dr. Denis Mukwege, who is the lead doctor at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I asked him if he ever met a boy who suffered this experience and was then rehabilitated. He answered no. Worse than a suicide bomber, these boys and men are so psychologically scarred that from the point of the trauma forward, they spend the rest of their lives terrorizing and destroying others.
Since our trip, I have been haunted by the human capacity to use creativity and imagination to such deadly ends. I would like to think that we are better off in the United States, but when you look at what was done in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, we are only wealthy enough to keep it offshore. In the United States, we have the money to create weaponry that removes us from the violence we enact. By contrast, in the Congo, the mixture of poverty and war is a lethal combination. Due to a lack of money, the human body becomes the weapon, the teenage boy the terror, and a woman’s womb “the battleground.”
-- Kate Whoriskey, Introduction to “Ruined” (2009)
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Like many people who perpetrate sexual crimes, the men and boys who raped were themselves victims of unspeakable violence. Rebels interested in recruiting more soldiers would invade family houses and make boys kill their parents in order to save themselves. These boys became so damaged they would join the rebel group that forced them to make this unconscionable choice. When I spoke to Dr. Denis Mukwege, who is the lead doctor at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I asked him if he ever met a boy who suffered this experience and was then rehabilitated. He answered no. Worse than a suicide bomber, these boys and men are so psychologically scarred that from the point of the trauma forward, they spend the rest of their lives terrorizing and destroying others.
Since our trip, I have been haunted by the human capacity to use creativity and imagination to such deadly ends. I would like to think that we are better off in the United States, but when you look at what was done in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, we are only wealthy enough to keep it offshore. In the United States, we have the money to create weaponry that removes us from the violence we enact. By contrast, in the Congo, the mixture of poverty and war is a lethal combination. Due to a lack of money, the human body becomes the weapon, the teenage boy the terror, and a woman’s womb “the battleground.”
-- Kate Whoriskey, Introduction to “Ruined” (2009)
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