"In Darfur" in Central Park

Thanks for stopping by.

I'd like to welcome you and then dive right in. Welcome. Dive. The HuffPo folks have invited me to blog about things related to Darfur, Sudan, such as the play I've written, fittingly titled "In Darfur." If you act fast and live in or near Manhattan, you can join us this Monday for a reading public reading of the play at the Delacorte theater in Central Park. The generous folks at the Public along with some very cool donors, have made this unusual event a reality. Primarily, the Delacorte is the spot for Shakespeare and an occasional Chekhov or Brecht play. They don't usually do readings, they do full productions of classics here in Central Park. However, the legacy of the Public is that it's a place for some of the most politically-minded contemporary theater. So, they bent their rules a little bit. If you're near Central Park this Monday, come on over, we've got 1800 seats with your name on them. After the reading, there's a stellar panel featuring Nicholas Kristof, Samantha Power, John Prendergast, Omer Ismael and Mark Hanis. Their bios and more information about this free event here.

In Darfur, Sudan, the genocide that has unfolded in slow motion over four years has left more than 200,000 dead and another 1 million, perhaps 2 million, without homes and living in makeshift camps. It's only getting worse, as the genocide is bleeding deep into Chad and into the Central African Republic.

Among the victims is Hawa, a Darfuri woman in her early 20's who was a university student and an English teacher until the Janjaweed -- a military force of Arab nomads armed by the Sudanese government -- attacked her village, killed every man they could find, raped women and children, and burned every last home to the ground. As of this writing, her whereabouts are unknown.

I first encountered Hawa's story while working as a research assistant for Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist who had written about her in his ongoing coverage of Darfur. Some months later, I got a commission from the Guthrie Theater and Playlabs in Minneapolis to write a play about the crisis. I eventually persuaded Nick to let me go with him (I wore him down) to the refugee camps along the Chad-Sudan border. The result was In Darfur, a play that has as its protagonist a woman named Hawa.

A few days before we were leaving, Nick said to me, "This is a suicide mission. I know why I'm going, I'm a columnist, but is it worth risking your life to write a play?" I said, "It is worth the risk. You're a journalist, this is what you do. I'm a playwright, this is what I do." I had no idea how to portray something as incomprehensible as genocide, but I knew I couldn't write this play if I wasn't on the ground to see it with my own eyes.

We slept in aid compounds and beneath the stars. I met young children with bandages over bullet wounds. I saw my first human dying, a man -- no more than twenty years old -- who was fighting on the side of the Janjaweed and had attacked the village next to his for two hundred dollars and had been shot. I saw children eager for any diversion to distract from the boredom and hopelessness of life in a refugee camp. I saw entire villages burned to ashes, I talked to young girls who had been raped not 48 hours earlier.

When I returned to Brooklyn, I began to write this play. I wondered whether I had a right to write it, if it was co-opting to tell an African story. In the end, I figured there would be room for all of the Darfur plays to be written, and the thing to do was to sit down and tell the story I wanted to tell. Ordinarily, Hawa's story might not be suited to drama: Darfur is a long-running tragedy with no end in sight; current events are often too slippery to serve as the direct basis for a coherent narrative; and, some people think overt political arguments make for bad plays. But for me, a play was the only way for me to tell Hawa's story.

Issue plays present an almost endless list of things to avoid: didacticism, inaccuracy, boredom, earnestness, pretension, hypocrisy, and so forth. The list of what to strive for is shorter: action, conflict, consequence, and a seed planted in the audience's mind that leads them to ask, "What will I do, knowing what I now know?" With any play, what we all want is a compelling story.

The Greeks, Shakespeare, and Arthur Miller all mixed politics and theater (with varying degrees of success). More recently, Tony Kushner, Caryl Churchill and Suzan-Lori Parks have as well. The challenge is writing a play that isn't driven solely by polemics but by conflict and catharsis. It's moot whether theatre is the place for politics, because the answer is a resounding yes. The difficulty is in the balance, not the subject matter.

The last century has shown it's almost pointless to hope politicians will lead the way in the fight against genocide. The real leadership has to come from ordinary citizens. And it can start with the writers, actors, and directors who create plays, as well as the audiences who watch them.