Historical Background and Context for the Play

Historical Context of the Play (Erin)

Historical Background and Context of Ruined

Lynn Nottage 

• Born in 1964 and raised in Brooklyn by an artistic and politically driven family, Nottage was quickly exposed to the issues she discusses throughout her plays as well as African American art. 
• Attended the High School of Music and Art in Harlem, then studied English and creative writing at Brown University and then enrolled at Yale School of Drama for further training. 
• Worked with Amnesty International that focused on public relations and outreach. Her time ran short when the organization discussed the issue of female genital mutilation, but because it was considered to be a cultural action it was not a legal matter and the group did not recognize it as a human rights violation. 
• She took focus on female rights, sex trafficking and other cultural practicing involving women.
• The lack of recognition and public attention to women's rights caused Nottage to revisit playwriting and focus on social and political issues.
• Nottage spent more of her career traveling to Uganda where she conducted interviews with women that were affected by the rape and brutality of the decades long war in the Congo. 

Congo War

• The Second Congo War  began in 1998 (only a year after the First Congo War) and lasted until 2003. 
• During the Civil War there were 9 african countries and 25 other armed groups battaling killing around 5.4 million people over the course of about 5 years. (this made it the most deadly war since WW11) and another 2 million people fled Africa seeking asylum.
• Despite the new government in Western Congo, Eastern Congo remained unsafe, causing the Second War where the Rwandan/Ugandan performed a joint invasion in 1998.   
• The War officially ended in 2003 

Ruined (2007)

• Nottage was known for writing similar plays. Her first play Mud, River, Stone (1998) was also set in Africa.
• Ruined was first performed in 2007 at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago
• Nottage was inspired by author Bertolt Brecht's and his idea of intellectual distance or alienation. 
• In the early 2000's realism was at a revival in western theatre. While the text reflects on social issues in the Congo, Nottage uses western dramatic conventions to connect to the American audience. 

Nottage recieving her Pulitizer Prize award in 2009 for Ruined 

Iqbal, Nosheen. “Lynn Nottage: a Bar, a Brothel and Brecht.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 20 Apr. 2010, www.theguardian.com/stage/2010/apr/20/lynn-nottage-ruined.

“Ruined, By Lynn Nottage .” The Pulitzer Prizes, 2009, www.pulitzer.org/winners/lynn-nottage.

“The Norton Anthology of Drama.” The Norton Anthology of Drama, by J. Ellen Gainor et al., 3rd ed., vol. 2, W.W. Norton & Company, 2018, pp. 1681–1748.