What inspired the writing of this play?
Ken Urban: I started the play because I had read Philip Gourevitch’s book “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families.” I knew the basic details of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, but reading that book haunted me. I couldn’t stop thinking about the details of the massacres that took place in Catholic churches.
Shortly after finishing the book – this was 2001 – I started following the stories in the Guardian of two nuns who were being tried in Belgium for their role in a church massacre. I was raised Catholic, and I attended twelve years of Catholic school. I had long since abandoned my faith. But there was something about seeing the faces of those nuns. Again, the only word I can think of is haunted. They haunted me.
I was pretty firm in my belief that I would never write a play about Catholicism, but I couldn’t resist. If I told other writers that they should write the very play they didn’t think they could or should, I must take the same advice.
What was your process for this? How do you sit down and get into material this challenging?
Ken: I am not going to lie: it was a pretty difficult play to write. It took me a long time to get a solid draft. A few years into the project, I realized I was too beholden to the actual biographies of the nuns. I had to put all the research away and write a story that was emotionally truthful. Again, I looked to my Catholic education, and found inspiration in the Stations of the Cross, the graphic depiction of the death of Jesus. The goal when you meditate on the images in the Stations of the Cross is to imagine his suffering; you put yourself in his place and experience empathy for him. That is, of course, what theater asks of us: to identify with the characters in the play. It was that realization that cracked open the play for me.
Before I would write, I would watch interviews with genocide survivors, their eyes so empty because of what they had seen; they lived through, but never recovered from what they had experienced. I wanted to make sure I really understood the world I was writing about. I would watch until I was physically ill and then begin work on the play. It was my way to honor them.
Your writing goes back and forth between pieces focused on political or historical events on a grand scale, and ones that zoom in on specific aspects of contemporary adult relationships (even as they all feature some aspects of both). Is it a conscious choice or need to vary the scope? Or is this simply how you are inspired?
Ken: It’s how I am feeling inspired, to be honest. I get inspired, then I let an idea marinate until I know how the story starts and finishes. Then I write. It is always about the story and the characters.
It is true that all my plays are about the relationship between the personal and the larger world. I began writing my first play while I was living in London. British theater, as a general rule, is idea-driven. Plays are about something there and that’s what I like in theater: passion married with ideas.
What effect has the writing of this play had on you? Do you hope viewing the play will have a similar impact on audiences that making it had for you?
Ken: Writing this play changed my life. Spending time with the research made me think about the cruelty of men and women, as well as their unspeakable kindness. I hope an audience feels the same as they leave the theater. The things the Hutu militias did are evil, and yet within that evil, exists the potential for some people to do so much good.
To call a play "political" suggests that it has an agenda -- either in sharing facts, arguing an opinion, or inspiring discussion or action. What are your thoughts on the potential of theater to effectively do these things? Is it something you looked to create in this or other of your plays?
Ken: A play is political when engages the larger social world. When it tells a personal story, and that story is understood against the backdrop of the larger social world. Most theater is political.
Sarah Kane, the British playwright, talked about the experience of watching a play as world-changing. When you put someone through an experience, that person sees the world in a different way. I have no interest in educating in any pedantic way. If seeing a performance of Sense of an Ending makes you go out and do something that helps reduce the barbarity of this world, that would be great. But I would be barking up the wrong tree, if that’s what I thought the end goal of making theater was.
What is that end goal, then?
Empathy
The ability to see the world in a new way
To have an experience in a room with others
To feel like your brain has been re-wired
That’s why we go to the theater. That’s why I write plays.
Portions of this interview are drawn from previous articles in ThisWeek London and Actors&Performers.
Ken Urban: I started the play because I had read Philip Gourevitch’s book “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families.” I knew the basic details of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, but reading that book haunted me. I couldn’t stop thinking about the details of the massacres that took place in Catholic churches.
Shortly after finishing the book – this was 2001 – I started following the stories in the Guardian of two nuns who were being tried in Belgium for their role in a church massacre. I was raised Catholic, and I attended twelve years of Catholic school. I had long since abandoned my faith. But there was something about seeing the faces of those nuns. Again, the only word I can think of is haunted. They haunted me.
I was pretty firm in my belief that I would never write a play about Catholicism, but I couldn’t resist. If I told other writers that they should write the very play they didn’t think they could or should, I must take the same advice.
What was your process for this? How do you sit down and get into material this challenging?
Ken: I am not going to lie: it was a pretty difficult play to write. It took me a long time to get a solid draft. A few years into the project, I realized I was too beholden to the actual biographies of the nuns. I had to put all the research away and write a story that was emotionally truthful. Again, I looked to my Catholic education, and found inspiration in the Stations of the Cross, the graphic depiction of the death of Jesus. The goal when you meditate on the images in the Stations of the Cross is to imagine his suffering; you put yourself in his place and experience empathy for him. That is, of course, what theater asks of us: to identify with the characters in the play. It was that realization that cracked open the play for me.
Before I would write, I would watch interviews with genocide survivors, their eyes so empty because of what they had seen; they lived through, but never recovered from what they had experienced. I wanted to make sure I really understood the world I was writing about. I would watch until I was physically ill and then begin work on the play. It was my way to honor them.
Your writing goes back and forth between pieces focused on political or historical events on a grand scale, and ones that zoom in on specific aspects of contemporary adult relationships (even as they all feature some aspects of both). Is it a conscious choice or need to vary the scope? Or is this simply how you are inspired?
Ken: It’s how I am feeling inspired, to be honest. I get inspired, then I let an idea marinate until I know how the story starts and finishes. Then I write. It is always about the story and the characters.
It is true that all my plays are about the relationship between the personal and the larger world. I began writing my first play while I was living in London. British theater, as a general rule, is idea-driven. Plays are about something there and that’s what I like in theater: passion married with ideas.
What effect has the writing of this play had on you? Do you hope viewing the play will have a similar impact on audiences that making it had for you?
Ken: Writing this play changed my life. Spending time with the research made me think about the cruelty of men and women, as well as their unspeakable kindness. I hope an audience feels the same as they leave the theater. The things the Hutu militias did are evil, and yet within that evil, exists the potential for some people to do so much good.
To call a play "political" suggests that it has an agenda -- either in sharing facts, arguing an opinion, or inspiring discussion or action. What are your thoughts on the potential of theater to effectively do these things? Is it something you looked to create in this or other of your plays?
Ken: A play is political when engages the larger social world. When it tells a personal story, and that story is understood against the backdrop of the larger social world. Most theater is political.
Sarah Kane, the British playwright, talked about the experience of watching a play as world-changing. When you put someone through an experience, that person sees the world in a different way. I have no interest in educating in any pedantic way. If seeing a performance of Sense of an Ending makes you go out and do something that helps reduce the barbarity of this world, that would be great. But I would be barking up the wrong tree, if that’s what I thought the end goal of making theater was.
What is that end goal, then?
Empathy
The ability to see the world in a new way
To have an experience in a room with others
To feel like your brain has been re-wired
That’s why we go to the theater. That’s why I write plays.
Portions of this interview are drawn from previous articles in ThisWeek London and Actors&Performers.
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