About
the Play:
Winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Ruined is a full-length drama by Lynn Nottage. A
haunting, probing work about the resilience of the human spirit
during times of war. Set in a small mining town in the Congo, Ruined is a
powerful play that follows a shrewd businesswoman in a land torn apart by
civil war. But is she protecting or profiting by the women she
shelters? How far will she go to survive? Can a price be placed on a
human life?
Ruined is a complex story of pain and hope. A rain forest
bar and brothel called Mama Nadi's in the brutally war-torn
Democratic Republic of Congo is the setting for Lynn Nottage's
extraordinary play. What is justified when survival is on the line?
As the vicious civil war drags on, young women find their way to
Mama's, and to safety – of a kind. The establishment's shrewd
matriarch, Mama Nadi, both protects and profits off the bodies of
women who have become casualties of violence, ensuring survival by
catering to both sides of the civil war, as government soldiers and
rebel forces alike choose from her inventory of women, many already
"ruined" by rape and torture when they were pressed into
prostitution. Inspired by interviews she conducted in Africa with
Congo refugees, Lynn Nottage has crafted an engrossing and
uncommonly human story with humour and song served alongside its
postcolonial and feminist politics in the rich theatrical tradition
of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage.
Ruined premiered in 2008 at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago
and transferred to off-Broadway in 2009 at the Manhattan Theatre Club
(MTC), New York City Center and was the most acclaimed new play of 2009, having received the following awards: the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play, Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Play, Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, and OBIE Award for Best New American Play. It subsequently toured widely throughout
US regional theatres and premiered internationally at the Almeida
Theatre in London. The play has since been produced throughout the
world, including Canada, Cambodia, Chad, The Caribbean, The
Democratic Republic of Congo, and Germany.
Cast: 4 female, 8 male
What people say:
"A powerhouse drama.... Lynn
Nottage's beautiful, hideous and unpretentiously important
play [is] a shattering, intimate journey into faraway news reports."
— New York Newsday
"An intense and gripping new
drama ... the kind of new play we desperately need: well-informed and
unafraid of the world's brutalities. Nottage is one of our finest
playwrights, a smart, empathetic and daring storyteller who tells a
story an audience won't expect." — Time Out New York
"Ruined takes us
inside an unthinkable reality and into the heads of victims and
perpetrators to create a full-immersion drama of shocking complexity
and moral ambiguity. What's more surprising is the exquisite balance
the playwright brings — of brutality and poetry, hope and even
humor." — Variety
"Strong and absorbing…a raw
and genuine agony pulses within…a cleareyed celebration of
endurance." — New York Times
"Sincere, passionate,
courageous and acutely argued, Ruined is a
remarkable theatrical accomplishment…." — Chicago
Tribune
"In the hands of this talented
playwright, what might have been a predictable political polemic
instead emerges as a richly stirring and complex drama that even
includes generous doses of humor." — New York Post
About the Playwright:
Lynn Nottage is an African-American playwright and
screenwriter whose work often deals with the lives of African
Americans and women. She is a graduate of Brown University and the
Yale School of Drama, and is also an Associate Professor in the
Theatre Department at Columbia School of the Arts. Her plays have
been produced widely in the United States and throughout the world.
She won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Ruined and for Sweat,
making her the first woman to win the prestigious award twice.