About the Play:

Ruined has become a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues.

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? In Mama Nadi's bar her rules apply. No arguments, no politics, no guns. 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 received its UK premiere in 2010 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

"Overwhelming... could not be more powerful." — The Observer (London)

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.