Trigger warnings: Sexual assault, prostitution, alcohol consumption, war

In this episode, Randy and Tyler discuss the 2009 Pulitzer Prizewinning Play, Ruined by Lynn Nottage.

Synopsis from StageAgent.com:  Set in a small mining town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lynn Nottage’s Ruined follows Mama Nadi, a businesswoman who is trying to stay afloat in a world torn apart by civil war. The war has ravaged her country, and especially the young girls who have literally been torn to pieces by soldiers on both sides of the conflict. Mama Nadi takes “damaged” girls into her brothel/bar and profits from them, but also protects them from the brutality of the world outside her doors.

Amongst Mama Nadi’s charges are Josephine, the daughter of a chief whose town was destroyed and who was raped by rebel soldiers; Salima, who was taken by rebel soldiers, who killed her baby and took her as a prisoner-of-war before making her pregnant; and Sophie, a young girl who has been “ruined” by sexual violence. We also meet soldiers and commanders on both sides of the conflict, all frequent customers at Mama’s bar.

******* IN OUR NEXT EPISODE *******
Join us as we discuss the 1928 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Strange Interlude by Eugene O'Neill.  

From Encyclopedia.com:  The play covers a period of twenty-five years in the lives of mostly upper-middle-class East Coast characters. It centers on Nina Leeds, a passionate, tormented woman whose fiancé was killed in World War I and who spends the remainder of her life searching for an always-elusive happiness.

This is a very long play, lasting over five hours in performance. The story is not especially complex, and the length of the play derives from O'Neill's revival of two theatrical devices that had fallen out of use for nearly a century: the soliloquy, in which a character alone on the stage speaks his or her thoughts aloud, and the aside, which enables characters to reveal their thoughts to the audience but not to the other characters on stage. These devices, which O'Neill employed at length, enabled the playwright to probe deeply into his characters' motivations. The soliloquies and asides reveal the discrepancies between what the characters say and do, and what they really feel.

Note: This is a "Play in nine acts".  WHAT?

Note from Brittanica.com:  Its length was an innovation, for in its original production it began in the late afternoon, paused for a dinner intermission, and resumed at the hour when most plays begin. It also employed then innovative stage techniques, such as stream-of-consciousness soliloquies and asides.

DeScripted
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DeScriptedPod
Twitter: @DeScriptedPod - www.twitter.com/DeScriptedPod
Instagram: @DeScriptedPod - www.instagram.com/DeScriptedPod