WINTER Miller was near the Chad-Sudan border conducting research on the Darfur conflict last year when a Darfuri man took her to the spot where the janjaweed had bayoneted his son. "He said, 'They're in the trees. They can see us,' " she recalls. "We immediately got in the car and left. That moment was a bit chilling."
Miller put her life at risk in the war-torn region not for a book or a news article, but for a play -- "In Darfur," which had a developmental production at New York's Public Theater in April and dual readings at Central Park's Delacorte Theater and London's Donmar Warehouse on July 9.
The play is one of a number of recent dramatic works revolving around the conflicts in Sudan, where government-backed militias have killed at least 200,000 people, and Rwanda, where extremist Hutu militias killed more than 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994.
Although the topic of genocide and war can be tough for audiences to stomach, the stakes lend themselves to drama. When J.T. Rogers went to Rwanda to research his play "The Overwhelming," which premiered at London's National Theatre in 2006 and opens off-Broadway in the fall, "every story was like something out of Shakespeare," he says.
Why take on such a difficult subject? For some playwrights, it's a personal connection. Miller is the research assistant for Nicholas D. Kristof, the New York Times columnist who won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for his Darfur reports.
Miller persuaded Kristof to take her to refugee camps in Chad. The trip inspired "In Darfur," in which a journalist goes to a camp to convince a victim to tell her story.
"I wasn't paying much attention during the Rwandan genocide," Miller says. "There was some sense of wanting to recognize that failing in myself and do better this time."
Jenni Wolfson wrote about her near-death experiences as a U.N. investigator in Rwanda after the genocide for a monologues class at the Peoples Improv Theater in New York. The class was moved to tears. And despite the fact that Wolfson had little acting experience, her teacher offered to direct her in a solo show. "It's actually scarier for me going onstage than being attacked by rebels in Rwanda," she says. Her play, "Rash," went up at 59E59 Theaters in New York on July 10 to 13 and will play the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in August.
