Nottage's RUINED Picked Up by HBO and Harpo Productions

According to the LA Times, Lynn Nottage is set to create a teleplay of Ruined, which will be produced by HBO Films and Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions.  The project is still in its early phases and a timeline has not yet been announced.

Ruined is set in the African country of Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where the rape of Congolese women amid an ongoing military conflict has became a systematic, deliberate and often public way to instill terror. Here, Mama Nadi runs a bar, and while she protects the women she hires, she also profits from them.

Nottage noted in an interview for OSF's Illuminations that her play emerged after taking two trips to east Africa in 2004 and then 2005. Her focus was the stories of the Congolese women, whose narratives had not been reported by journalists covering the fighting in Congo. "Those were the voices that resonated most loudly," she said. "They were composites, but I also took some poetic license with those particular characters. It's not a documentary play.

"I wanted the audience to imagine what it meant to be 'ruined,' not just physically, but emotionally as well," she said. "If I had graphically described what happens to Sophie, people would focus on that aspect of her abuse and not...invest in her journey as a character. It becomes overwhelming."

And so Ruined is a celebration of the resilience of women in Congo and focuses on the relationship between them.

Photo Credit: Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.

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