MR. KOJO NNAMDIIn many parts of the world, war has gone beyond the battlefield. The Democratic Republic of Congo has been engaged in a messy civil war for more than 15 years. And the horrors visited on the civilian population are almost unimaginable. A new study indicating, some, two million women and girls have been victims of rape. Survivors range in age from three to 80. This is the emotionally complex setting for a play about women caught in that conflict.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIMama Nadi runs a bar that's also a brothel. Her girls are refugees of the war. Most of them, shunned by their families because of the sexual violence they've endured, they now work for Mama Nadi. They're clients are soldiers, possibly perpetrators of rape themselves. Joining us to discuss the play, "Ruined," is Jenny Jules. She is an English actress who works with Tricycle Theatre. She's currently appearing in the production as the character, Mama Nadi.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIJenny Jules, thank you so much for joining us.

MS. JENNY JULESIt's a pleasure to be here.

NNAMDIAlso with us is Rachael Holmes. She is a stage and television actress and educator based in New York City. She plays the character, Sophie. Rachael Holmes, thank you for joining us.

MS. RACHAEL HOLMESThanks for having me, Kojo.

NNAMDIAlso with us is Emira Woods, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. Emira, good to see you.

MS. EMIRA WOODSAlways a pleasure, Kojo.

NNAMDII'm going to start with you, what struck you most about this play when you saw it?

WOODSWell, first, the phenomenal actors, the incredible power and vision of Lynn Nottage. No wonder she won the Pulitzer Prize for this play.

NNAMDII should mention that, "Ruined," by Lynn Nottage, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 and that the show runs through June 5th at the Arena Stage.

WOODSAbsolutely. And, you know, it's a reminder that the culture workers among us, the poets, the writers, those visionaries, the filmmakers, often they're able to capture, in ways, that, you know, some of us in the think tank, we do the panels really well, the discussions really well but the creative arts can bring things alive in powerful ways. And I think the play, "Ruined," with these phenomenal actors and actresses, was an opening to talk about the crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

WOODSIn ways that many people recognize needs to happen, to actually finally break the silence for the international community to pay attention to actually begin to do something to make a difference in the lives, not only of the women projected in the play but in millions throughout the country of the Congo.

NNAMDIRachael, this is a play about war with women, three women in particular at the center, could you set the scene for us, if you can?

HOLMESWell, at the beginning of the play, it opens in Mama Nadi's, actually, and she's there with Jeremiah Birkett, who plays my Uncle, Christian. And...

NNAMDIWho is a traitor of some kind.

HOLMES...yes. He's a professor and...

NNAMDIOh, he's actually a professor?

HOLMESYeah. But, you know, at times of war, everything's turned upside down.

NNAMDIYou do what you have to.

HOLMESYou do what you have to, status goes out the window. Now, it's about who has the guns and who has the power. And she starts talking about, you know, she's getting goods, she -- you know, everything needs to be traveled by land to get, you know, food, everything. So he's used to delivering goods for her and, I think, what people don't realize is, at this point, the goods are human beings.

NNAMDIAnd one of those human beings happened to be in the room at the time. This room at the time. Jenny, a brothel seems like an unusual place for a play about rape. Tell us about the women you portray, Mama Nadi?

JULESYeah, it does feel like a contradiction. But it, in fact, is the safest place for these women to be. Mama Nadi is a profiteer of war. She is -- she's everything, basically. She trades in women but most of the women that come to her have been shunned by their families because they've been raped and they've been outcast by their villages. The play is extraordinary because it is full of light and music and there's a lot of humor, a lot of comedy. But we're dealing with the most heinous issues.

JULESWe're dealing with rape on a mass epidemic scale. We're also dealing with fistula with ruination, with soldiers who cut women's vaginas to ruin them so that they can't reach -- they can't have sex. So that they are destroyed. But in the light of that, these women come together and they are resilient and they survive.

NNAMDIMama Nadi is a shrewd business women yet she still manages to protect the women she takes in. And in that situation, in a place occupied by, usually, men with very powerful weapons, that's a very difficult undertaking. When you first approached about this role, tell us what your thoughts were, what were the biggest challenges for you?

JULESThe biggest challenges was to make it believable. And I'm quite tiny, I'm quite slight in stature. And I thought that -- but I'm quite a strong person and I thought, how can I portray this? How can I get this across? And by focusing on her qualities and her strength and her courage and I spoke to Lynn Nottage and I said, Lynn, how comes they don't just beat Mama over the head, take her money, burn down her shack, burn down her establishment?

JULESAnd she said, mama acts like a man. And that's how she gets what she wants. She sees that the men are rewarded for bad behavior so that's how Mama develops her character and her personality as a male. So, Mama is so strong. As soon as you walk in that place, she lays down the rules. You give me your weapons, you give me your arms, I'm taking your bullets. And if anything goes off, she has a machete, you know, placed anywhere in that bar. And she will chop your head off.

NNAMDIUntil you mentioned that you were small in stature, I hadn't noticed. Because Mama Nadi, is for me, so fearsome, that I just think of you as being very large. But she isn't, Jenny Jules is an English actress, she works with Tricycle Theatre. She plays the character Mama Nadi in, "Ruined," currently at Arena Stage. She joins us in studio with Rachael Holmes who plays the character, Sophie. And Emira Woods is co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies.

NNAMDIWe take your calls at 800-433-8850. Have you seen the play, "Ruined?" What was your reaction? Do you think the international community is paying enough attention to the horrific crimes going on in the Congo and elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa? Call us, 800-433-8850. Rachael, I want to play an exchange between two of the women at the brothel. One of them is you, Rachael, your character Sophie. The other is the character, Josephine, who's played by Jamairais Malone, is that correct?

HOLMESYes.

NNAMDIHere is that scene.

NNAMDIRachael, tell us about that scene.

HOLMESThere's so many layers to this because the three girls who are there at Mama Nadi's have very different stories but at the same time, they're all the same. They've all been attacked in such vicious ways that are happening, as we speak, yes, every minute based on the new article that just came out in the Times today. Every minute a women is being raped and in instances, ruined. And it's hard because the character of Sophie was a virgin. She's 18 years old. She was going to go to university.

HOLMESAnd her life has been turned upside down because she was gang raped by some soldiers. And the feeling, you know, what the Josephine character says to Sophie, is that, you're something worse than a whore. And, I think, that's important to say because what is happening in this epidemic is that women are being systematically raped. And it's -- really is a means of violence. And what happens after they're raped is that, their families shun them.

HOLMESIt's stigma now. So they're turned out and there's nowhere to go. They can't receive therapy. They can't receive the physical rehabilitation they need. So in this very delicate scene between two very young girls, it's actually the theme, is that, if you're raped, you're ruined. And not just physically, but physiologically. And it, I think, strikes at the bedrock of the definition of terrorism, to terrorize a person. And when you attack a people, you attack the women.

HOLMESBecause it is the women, we're the ones who give birth and we replenish the earth. And, Lynn, in such a captivating way, has captured this political struggle that's going on in just a couple of lines.

NNAMDIBefore I get to Emira, what's to talk a little bit more about that political struggle. Jenny Jules, one of the things that came across about Josephine, even though she seemed to be the most outgoing, is that, inside, there was a lot of pain and a lot of hurt and on some occasions, she could take it out on no one else but her colleagues. But you, your character apparently recognized that.

JULESAbsolutely. She recognizes Josephine's strength. But she also knows that Josephine is a mollusk. Because in a sense, so is Mama.

NNAMDIYeah.

JULESMama is so hard externally but inside, you know, she's soft and she hides her own secrets and everything else. And so, yeah, Mama knows that Josephine can handle the men because Josephine is the chiefs daughter. She's very proud and whatever she intends to do, whatever she strives to do, she does it as well as she can. So Mama knows that she will be the best whore, basically. And Josephine, her pride makes sure that she does the best job.

JULESBut Josephine -- none of the women can cope because what happens is, in the coping, they haven't realized that the damage is seeping out. And there is a scene and something happens to Josephine on stage and you see that she's as vulnerable as everybody else. She's as vulnerable as Sophie, as all of the other women who are in the brothel.

NNAMDIEmira Woods, as Rachael mentioned earlier, the Journal of American Medicine is coming out with a study that indicates that, not one but at least as many as two million women have been raped during these last 15 years in the Congo. But when we say, two million, it's hard for people to wrap their heads around that number of people. What you can wrap your heads around are the individual characters that you see in this play as representative of those women.

WOODSAbsolutely, that's the power of this play. There's a beautiful line that says, "Our body will not be used as a battlefield." And, I think, that's the nugget of it, right, that these women's bodies are being used as a battlefield. But the root of the crisis, really, is the richness of this country that's at the heart of Africa, is in the center of Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has just been blessed with tremendous resources.

WOODSFrom gold to uranium, remember, it's a uranium from the Congo that was used to make the nuclear bomb, dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, right? It goes back a long way, that these resources of the Congo have actually been the center of global interests and global attention. But we have to also recognize, that now, there is this vital mineral called coltan that was that was beautifully represented in the play.

WOODSColtan looks like a dirty old rock, right? But it is essentially the core on which these battles are being fought. Without coltan you cannot make cell phones, or game systems, or jet planes, computers. All of these core items in the global economy could not be made without the coltan that comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and we could also talk about oil. Clearly oil, it's been discovered back in 1978 in the Congo, but more recently, because of new technologies, there have been increases in the opportunities to extract the oil from places like the DR Congo, particularly offshore.

WOODSAnd this increase in interest, not only in the coltan, but also in the oil is absolutely at the root of these battles represented so beautifully in the play. So the women, and the rape of women, is a consequence, but the cause is the fight over these resources. It's a fight that has involved many multinational corporations. It's involved geopolitical activists from the U.S. to China. It's also involved the neighboring countries, Rwanda and Uganda in particular, very much implicated in these battles.,

WOODSSo it's a complex situation, but at the root is control over these vital rich soils of the Congo.

NNAMDIOne of the characters in the play offers Mama Nadi some coltan as collateral. I'd like to play a scene between Mama Nadi and Sophie.

NNAMDITell us what's going on there, Jenny?

JULESWhat's happening is -- it's quite a complicated scene, is that Mama is talking to Sophie about not allowing the water to totally destroy your soul. That there must always be a part of you that it can't touch, in order for you to remain a human being. At the same as Mama is telling Sophie this, she also knows that Sophie has been stealing from her, as so she's setting Sophie up in order to knock Sophie down.

JULESSophie's been stealing money and Mama has been given a stone by a soldier -- by a miner, sorry, and it took him about half a year to dig it up. And he gave it to her for four beers and a woman. And he didn't know the value of it, but Mama did.

NNAMDISure did.

JULESSo Mama is keeping it, and Mama says it's her insurance policy. It's kind of -- it's gonna be -- if Mama has to flee or has to escape, Mama will take this with her. But Mama does something much more special with that stone.

NNAMDIIndeed, how did a woman like Sophie, Rachael, come to end up in this brothel?

HOLMESYou know, it's such an interesting question, because as we said before, although Mama Nadi's is a brothel, it's quite possibly the safest place for these girls, and Sophie lucked out. It's because her uncle took pity on her actually, and took her to the brothel, because Sophie's mother turned her away. She went back home expecting an embrace, wide open arms, just like all the other girls who had been terrorized in this way, and she was turned away completely.

HOLMESAnd her uncle decided to try to save her life and actually, at the beginning of the play, at first Mama doesn't want her because she is ruined, and you -- it's visible. You can see she can't walk straight, and there's this folklore that women who are ruined are indeed bad luck. And this a world that definitely still has a very spiritual heartbeat. So people believe in bad luck and no one wants her.

NNAMDIBut Sophie has skills.

HOLMESOh, definitely.

NNAMDIShe's educated, and Sophie has talent, which we'll get to later. We've got to take...

WOODSAnd she sings beautifully, that, too.

NNAMDIThat's the talent I'm talking about. We've got to take a short break. When we come back, hear Sophie sing. We'll be talking more about the play "Ruined" currently at Arena Stage. Taking your calls. If you have already called, stay on the line, we will get to your call. We still have lines open. The number is 800-433-8850. Do you think art can bring attention to difficult issues we'd rather not hear about and sometimes rather not talk about. 800-433-8850. Go to our website kojoshow.org. Send us a tweet, or send an email to kojo@wamu.org. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back. We're discussing the play "Ruined" currently at Arena Stage with Rachael Holmes who plays the character Mama Nadi -- I'm sorry. Rachael Holmes plays the character Sophie. Jenny Jules is an English actress who works with Tricycle Theater. She plays the character Mama Nadi. Rachael Holmes is a stage and television actress and educator, also with us in studios is Emira Woods, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. And we said earlier that the character Sophie displays not only her skills and her education, but her talent. So we'd like to play a clip of a song that Rachael, as Sophie, sings in this play.

NNAMDIConfession, Emira. When I first heard that voice in that song, I started looking around the theater, because I couldn't believe that it was coming from this ruined woman. Did you have that...

WOODSAbsolutely. I thought, wow. She's not only a great actress, but listen to that voice. Very, very powerful singer.

NNAMDIRachael, tell us about that song. Who is she performing for? What is she singing about?

HOLMESOh, man, that song, Kojo. Oh, it's so deep. I mean, Lynn's words are poetry on paper anyway, but then once she started to write lyrics to music, I mean, it's so meta. It's a complete commentary of the world that they're living in. I mean, the lyrics, the refrain is you come here to forget. You say drive away all regret and dance like it's the ending -- the ending of the war. That would be manna from heaven if this war ended.

HOLMESSo here we have this young ruined girl who will no longer go to university, who will probably never see her family again, who will never have children, will never get married, quite possibly will probably die, who knows, be killed. And here she is singing, entertaining some of the very soldiers that probably remind her of her own aggressors.

NNAMDIWhich Jenny, is what I wanted to talk to both you and Emira about. Because on the one hand, the song says they're coming there to get away from the war, and the other -- one of the things that Mama Nadi clearly realizes because she has her machetes, is that they're also in a way bringing the war.

JULESThey are bringing the war. They're bringing the war ever closer to Mama Nadi's establishment. But they do come to forget. It's really interesting because inside that brothel, those men are men. They're not animals, they're not soldiers, they're not anything. And they pay for the pleasure to be stroked by women. It's like they are stroked and they are cajoled, and they are sung to, and they are given beer and palm wine. And they feel like they are men, not anything else. And that's kind of -- and that's a beautiful image to think of in the middle of a war.

NNAMDIIndeed, Emira. It's interesting that the men come to Mama Nadi's as I was saying to forget the war, but in fact they bring the war to the women, and the way in which it's portrayed in the play, it doesn't really seem to make a difference whether they are rebels or allegedly government soldiers.

WOODSWell, absolutely. I think that's the irony here. On all sides you have these massive atrocities against civilians, massive abuses against women, mass violations of women's rights. And I think that is ultimately the greatest problem. That it doesn't matter whether it's a rebel force or a government force. They are all people with easy access to guns, and we have to talk about the flow of guns into the region. Easy access to guns. And they often use those guns against civilians.

WOODSSo yes, there are numerous efforts to quote/unquote "professionalize these armies," including efforts by the United States through its Africa command in the Congo to train, supposedly, these very forces that are still violating human rights, violating and raping women. So I think there has to be a greater accountability. First to stem the flow of guns into the region, but also to hold accountable whether it is the rebel forces, the government forces, the forces from the neighboring states, Uganda or Rwanda, that receive a tremendous amount of both political, financial, and military support from the United States. It is important to hold all these forces accountable.

NNAMDIAnd the men in the play, it's clear from the characters and the men in the play, that they also personify some of the ironies of this conflict. You have the farmer who's played by my man, (word?) Got to give him a shout out.

WOODSYeah. Absolutely, he was wonderful.

NNAMDIHe performed at the tenth anniversary that WAMU had for a talk show host who shall remain nameless. But his character as a farmer is torn between on the one hand being a fighter, and on the other hand wanting his wife back...

WOODSHe just wanted his wife, and he's there with….

NNAMDI...but he also drove her away.

WOODSCan I just regain my sense of normalcy again, right? And I think that's the horror of war. And you see it in so many contexts as people who are farmers, whether, you know, you see now in Libya, they were farmers, and now, you know, they're out there holding guns. You know, some are young people who would rather be in school, know that they need a future for themselves. And yet, they find themselves holding this gun doing unthinkable things to women and others that they would not normally have done.

WOODSSo I think at the core we have to get at the root of this crisis to be able to stop this continuous cycle as you said, Kojo, 50 years. Fifty years is more than enough. And I think clearly it's long overdue for the people of Congo to regain their sense of human dignity, to regain the lives that they deserve, to also regain control over their own destiny.

NNAMDIThere are a whole lot of people who want to talk to you. Sorry for keeping you waiting. We'll start with Anthony in Washington D.C. Anthony, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

ANTHONYYes. I'd first like to thank the cast. We very much enjoyed your play, particularly, you know, the set design and the staging. It was a very dynamic production. I wanted to ask you two questions. First I wanted to talk about rape. You know, many of us already know that rape isn't about sex. But when you talk about how women have become ruined, it goes behind the power dynamic into this other thing.

ANTHONYAnd I was hoping maybe you guys can talk about what that other thing is, what, you know, what the soldiers are attempting to achieve when they ruin women. And then also, this, you know, the conflict in Congo is about diamonds. It's about coltan. I mean, are you speaking also about blood diamonds and speaking also about the ways in which...

NNAMDIOne the reasons we had Emira Woods here is because she can speak at length about those things. One of the things I'd really like Jenny and Rachael to talk about, is what understanding you got about the effects of rape and sexual violence as a result of preparing for these roles, as a result of having to inhabit these characters.

JULESPersonally, I didn't know that this was going on in the Congo before I read the play, and I was devastated, because I think I'm worldly wise. And it was so not spoken about, it was so silent. The fact that if you can rape a woman and destroy her, destroy her family, destroy her community, destroy her village, you have save yourself bullets. It's cheaper to use rape as a weapon of war than it is to fire and shoot people when you to get to those villages.

JULESAnd the fact that it is kind of passed down from the generals, from the colonels, to the captains, to the actual foot soldiers, that this is what you do, this is how you destroy this community in order to stop them from fighting against you or from taking, you know, fighting with the rebels or whoever, your opposition. And I found that absolutely devastating.

NNAMDIIn your case, Rachael?

HOLMESIt's interesting. I lived in Paris for a while, and I worked in the 18th quarter in (speaks foreign language) and that's Children of a Taste of Gold. It's called Taste of Gold because it's the quarter in Paris that's the most diverse, and you will find a lot of African refugees there. And the first thing that came to me as I was working with Sophie, the first thing I really wanted to work with Charles, our director, on was her walk. And it's amazing how the research I had to do obstetric fistulae, where basically a woman is ruined, and just using the bathroom is sheer agony.

HOLMESAnd it's an injury that can actually remedied for about $350 American, if you can believe that. And once I started to work on her walk, I realized many years ago when I was living in Paris, I said to myself, oh, that's why those women were walking that way. And it's amazing, because they really do stand in the pain. Sophie does not walk in really exaggerated manner where it's so clear, because the point is, when you're ruined, you're trying to hide it. You don't want people to know. And in response to your question...

NNAMDIWell, you should know there were those of us in the audience who were checking to see if you would maintain that walk throughout the performance. Obviously, you did.

HOLMESYes. Yes, I did. And it's interesting because it is the psychological warfare as you said, and with being ruined, I think to me, that's when I realized that this is not -- it isn't just about -- of course, rape is not just about sex, but there's some kind of disconnect happening. This is a disease. This isn't just choosing between right and wrong anymore. This is men who are getting caught up in this abuse of power, and they're not themselves anymore. We're not dealing with -- they grew up little boys, and they grew up well also.

HOLMESAnd there's some kind of disconnect happening. This is a cry for help.

NNAMDIWe're running out of time, but I wanted to get in Dottie's comment, from Arlington, Va. Dottie, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

DOTTIEI just wanted to say that I think "Ruined" is why people go to the theater. It is just such an exquisitely difficult play. But my question is, how can you get yourself emotionally prepared to play that eight times a week?

WOODSGood question.

NNAMDIHey, that's what they do? How do you do that?

HOLMESYou know, it's part of being professional actress, as I'm sure Jenny will concur, is having that emotional palette at your feet. But it isn't easy. My answer is there is no answer, and, you know, we have a show tonight, and part of it is just trust, you know.

NNAMDIWell, one of the things that Dottie said is that not only do you have to do this eight times a week, but the topic itself is so wrenching that I resisted going to see it because I thought it would be a downer. And then to my surprise, Emira Woods, it was not. Why is it not a downer, in the 30 seconds or so we have left?

WOODSUltimately, it's the story about hope. It's a story about survival. It's a story about dignity. And I think we need that, right? We need to understand what's going on to get engaged, but we also need to understand the incredible power and resilience and creativity of people whether they're in the Congo or wherever they may be around the world.

NNAMDIUltimately it's a story about beauty personified by Jenny Jules. She's an English Actress who works with Tricycle Theater. She plays the character Mama Nadi. Thank you for joining us.

JULESThank you, sir.

NNAMDIAnd personified by Rachael Holmes who plays the character Sophie. She's a stage and television actress and educator based in New York. Thank you for joining us.

HOLMESThank you so much, Kojo.

NNAMDIAnd Emira Woods is the co-director of foreign policy and focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. Always a pleasure.

WOODSThank you, Kojo.

NNAMDIThank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.