Ruined by Lynn Nottage was published in 2010, detailing the horrific realities of the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The production takes a strong focus on the lives of two Congolese women who were both physically and psychologically damaged during the war, then “saved” and brought into a brothel for safety. Nottage pieces these devastating events together in a logical and entertaining fashion in order to create a melodramatic tale by personalizing issues, building compassion, and helping the audience understand their past. The play opens up with an inciting incident that grabs the attention of the audience and introduces the conflict. During this scene, Christian, a salesman, comes into Mama Nadi’s bar with cigarettes, …show more content…
One purpose is to enter another person’s experience, which is obviously done by allowing the audience to understand the crazy messed-up lives of Salima, Sophie, and Mama Nadi. More significantly, this play allows the audience to understand how cultural events impact people on a personal level. To do this, Nottage takes the events of the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and ties it directly to the lives of the characters. Doing this allows the audience to see just how brutal the detriments of the war were on Congolese women at the time. Without this art of storytelling, many audience members probably still wouldn’t know how Congolese women were treated by soldiers, and the extent to which the soldiers would go in order to make their lives miserable. To tag along with this, Nottage assists the audience in understanding their past. The civil war was a recent event, so this story allows many of the audience members to better understand events that happened early on in their own lives so that they don’t make the same mistakes and are better informed on important issues in their society. Even for audience members outside of the Democratic Republic of Congo, global issues are still relevant, so it’s important for them to understand events that are going on in the world around them, which Nottage’s production of Ruined allows them to
The characters address the audience; the fast movement from scene to scene juxtaposing past and present and prevents us from identifying with particular characters, forcing us to assess their points of view; there are few characters who fail to repel us, as they display truly human complexity and fallibility. That fallibility is usually associated with greed and a ruthless disregard for the needs of others. Emotional needs are rarely acknowledged by those most concerned with taking what they maintain is theirs, and this confusion of feeling and finance contributes to the play's ultimate bleak mood.
One of the goals in the play is to raise awareness about domestic violence. This is done effectively through the events that are played out in the
Firstly let us consider conflict. In each act of the play, we see the overpowering desire to belong leading to a climax of conflict amongst the characters, which has the consequence of exclusion. Conflict is a successful literary technique, as it engages the audience and focuses our attention on the issue of conflict and exclusion, brought about by the characters’ desires to be accepted by their community.
He does not understand his grandfather's words. He thinks his grandfather's words are a curse. He goes to the smoker to deliver his speech, in hopes of winning approval from the affluent men in town and a possibility to open doors for his future. At the smoker, where some of the most important men in town are "quite tipsy", belligerent and out of control. When he gets into the ballroom, there is a naked girl dancing.
A general air of superficiality invades the production. Why? Unless done with reality, the play loses its “tam” (Yiddish for taste), fringes on mockery of the way of life being depicted, and weakens the accomplishment of the author’s purpose.
So we see from the very beginning that this play is about the struggle between god and man, and about whose law comes first. But this play also can wash over us too quickly if we do not stop to see whether or not the characters truly act in accordance with what ...
The play opens at the dinner table. A knock on the door is heard. It
The play is set in the 1920s when women started to receive clerical jobs and were expected to complete certain milestones in life. For example, in the scene labeled “at home” young woman – the main character – tells her mom that she is going to get married, because everybody does it, but then says she will not because she does not love Mr. Jones (Machinal). Ultimately her choice was to not get married, but in the end she does because her mom needs and wants her to get married for financial stability and the young woman feels that her destiny was to care for her mother. However, in the scene titled “prohibited”, the young woman starts deciding her destiny and chooses to cheat on her husband, Mr. Jones (Machinal). This is the moment when she realizes she can control her own destiny. That she does not have to be the happy housewife that society says her fate has to be. But there was still one problem, society still appeared to be in control of her destiny because she hasn’t decided on what her exact destiny would
correlates to the condition of society during the fifties, and conveys a momentous idea that the people living during this time should have faith in God and hope for the betterment of society in times of hardships, and should not focus on the injustice in the world. First, the reference to the death of millions of innocent people in the bombings of London, Hiroshima, and Dresden outrightly relates to the suffering that people have experienced both during and after the war, because many people innocent perished in WWII for no reason. In addition, David’s death also parallels to the post-WWII era, and relates to J.B. and Sarah’s responses to his death to the pain and devastation that families suffered when their young children who served as soldiers died in World War II. J.B. and Sarah’s discussion during their Thanksgiving meal is yet another parallel to the postwar era and portrays the two different outlooks that people had on life after the war. Finally, MacLeish uses J.B. to relate to the people living during the postwar era by concluding the play with J.B. and Sarah finding comfort in love and rebuilding their life together as a family to convey the message that they should try to alleviate their hardships and sorrow by viewing the situation optimistically and by seeking love in the
The plays, The Glass Menagerie and A Raisin in the Sun, deal with the love, honor, and respect of family. In The Glass Menagerie, Amanda, the caring but overbearing and over protective mother, wants to be taken care of, but in A Raisin in the Sun, Mama, as she is known, is the overseer of the family. The prospective of the plays identify that we have family members, like Amanda, as overprotective, or like Mama, as overseers. I am going to give a contrast of the mothers in the plays.
Essentially this play can be regarded as the mid-life crisis of Walter Lee Younger, passionate for his family, ambitious, and bursting with energy and dreams. Walter cares about his family, and he hopes that buying the liquor store will being a brighter future to Travis, ?And-and I?ll say, all right son-it?s your seventeenth birthday, what is it you?ve decided?...Just tell me where you want to go to school and you?ll go. Just tell me, what it is you want to be ? and you?ll be it.?(Hansberry 109). Walter Lee, shackled by poverty and prejudice, and obsessed with his own sense of success, which he felt, would be the end of all of his social and economic problems. The dreams he had gave him a great sense of pride and self-satisfaction. Unfortunately Walter had to learn a hard lesson in life; pride and greed will eventually lead to unhappiness.
The cigarette case is introduced early into the play starting the first trivial conflict between the two main characters, Jack and Algernon. The conflict begins when Algernon refuses to hand the case over to Jack. Algernon, being the annoyance he is to Jack, reads what is prescribed on the inside of the case: “From little Cecily, with her fondest love to her dear Uncle Jack” (Wilde, 384-85). This is a crucial part in the play because it unmasks both Jack and Algernon as having a double life outside of the city. In the country Jack exhibits traditional Victorian values such as duty, honour, and respectability. Jack’s alter-ego Earnest; however, is used to keep his honourable image as “dear Uncle Jack” (Wilde, 385) intact. Jack’s motivation to leave the county and become the character he created is given to the viewer in his first line: “Oh, pleasure, pleasure! What else should bring one anywhere?” (Wilde, 382). The cigarette case also helps the reader understand Jack and Algernon better by cr...
The play’s major conflict is the loneliness experienced by the two elderly sisters, after outliving most of their relatives. The minor conflict is the sisters setting up a tea party for the newspaper boy who is supposed to collect his pay, but instead skips over their house. The sisters also have another minor conflict about the name of a ship from their father’s voyage. Because both sisters are elderly, they cannot exactly remember the ships name or exact details, and both sisters believe their version of the story is the right one. Although it is a short drama narration, Betty Keller depicts the two sisters in great detail, introduces a few conflicts, and with the use of dialogue,
This play shows the importance of the staging, gestures, and props making the atmosphere of a play. Without the development of these things through directions from the author, the whole point of the play will be missed. The dialog in this play only complements the unspoken. Words definitely do not tell the whole story.
Without a Name, a novel written by Yvonne Vera, explores the journey of a young Zimbabwean woman, Mazvita, during the late 1970’s guerilla war. In 1963, the two political parties in Zimbabwe were banned, which led to guerilla warfare in 1966. This ultimately led to emigration out of Rhodesia. In the novel, Mazvita traveled from her hometown of Mubaira, to the city of Harare. In her hometown, she faced rebel forces, who sexually abused her along with destroyed her village. In the course of her journey to Kadoma and the city of Harare, Mazvita encountered more political violence and a revolutionary social change. Along with the never-ending political revolution, it is important to note the gender differences at this time. Women were considered inferior in this male dominating culture; this idea is central to Vera’s writings and plays a significant role in Without A Name, where Vera attempts to establish a change in the traditional views in Africa. Due to women’s traditional roles in Zimbabwe, females become a site of oppression and bodily confinement, which give colonial powers an opportunity to use this secret sexuality as a way to abuse; Vera uses her female protagonist’s body and sexual pleasure to challenge patriarchy, with sex as a central symbol for resistance and ultimately freedom against colonial powers.