On Wednesday, May 13, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Lynn Nottage and acclaimed actress Quincy Tyler Bernstine will travel to Washington D.C. to participate in activities surrounding U.S Senate hearings that will address rape and other forms of violence against women that are occurring in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Nottage, who will be speaking at a public reception, will speak about her experience researching and writing RUINED which is set in the DRC. Bernstine will then deliver a monologue from the play that vividly describes the violence that occurred against the character ‘Salima,' which Bernstine plays in the acclaimed production, currently playing at
Manhattan Theatre Club.
Other speakers at the reception will include: Ron Haviv and Marcus Bleasdale (award-winning photojournalists who are part of an exhibition entitled Congo/Women Portraits of War: The Democratic Republic of Congo); and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA).
The reception will be held on Wednesday, in Washington D.C. in the Russell Senate Office Building, Hearing Room 332.
The reception will immediately follow a United States Senate Foreign Relations joint subcommittee hearing: Confronting Rape and Other Forms of Violence Against Women in Conflict Zones, with case studies on the DRC and Sudan. The joint hearing of the Subcommittee on International Operations and Organizations, Democracy, Human Rights and Global Women's Issues and the Subcommittee on African Affairs will be chaired by U.S. Senators Boxer and Russ Feingold (D-WI).
The joint subcommittee hearing on gender-based violence will take place at 2:30 PM on Wednesday, May 13 in the Dirksen Senate Building, room 419. U.S. legislators will hear testimony about violence against women (particularly rape) in conflict zones, using Sudan and the DRC as case studies. The range of panelists will include: women from the DRC and Sudan, including Chouchou Namegabe Nabintu (journalist, DRC); experts on the issue of gender violence; and government witnesses including Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues at the U.S. Department of State, The Honorable Melanne Verveer.
RUINED is the most acclaimed new play of 2009, having received the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Best Play award from the New York Drama Critics Circle, the
Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Play, the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding Off-Broadway Play, a
Theatre World Award, five Drama Desk Award nominations including Outstanding New Play, and two Drama League nominations including Distinguished Production of a Play.
Tickets for the
Manhattan Theatre Club and
Goodman Theatre co-production of RUINED are currently on sale through June 28 at MTC at New York
City Center - Stage I (131 West 55th Street).
From
Lynn Nottage, the Obie Award-winning author of such plays as Fabulation and Intimate Apparel and director
Kate Whoriskey (The Piano Teacher, Fabulation), comes this haunting, probing work about the resilience of the human spirit during times of war. Set in a small mining town in Democratic Republic of Congo, this powerful play follows Mama Nadi (Portia), 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?
Tickets for RUINED are available via New York
City Center Box Office (131 West 55th Street), CityTix® (212-581-1212) and
www.nycitycenter.org.
Tickets for RUINED are $75.
www.ManhattanTheatreClub.com
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