"A Tourism of Atrocity"
Designer Frank J. Oliva’s simple but vivid setting for Dogs of Rwanda at the intimate Urban
Stages displays two mud-like walls suggesting the color of dried blood and meeting
at an upstage apex, with a large rear opening showing a woven rush fence behind
it. A bench lines the stage right wall, and a dented tin can sits at center. John
Salutz’s lighting helps create an appropriate African feeling, while, overhead,
a sizable screen serves for Ryan Belock’s atmospheric projections.
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| Dan Hodge. Photo: Ben Hider. |
A stocky, West African musician (Abou Lion Diarra), with a
tan fedora, dreadlocks, a sport shirt, and jeans, enters, beating a rapid tattoo
on a small shoulder drum with a thin, hook-like stick before taking his seat
near a larger hand drum at stage left. Then, walking briskly down the center aisle
from the audience’s rear is a man, probably in his late 30s, who steps onto the
stage.
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| Dan Hodge, Abou Lion Diarra. Photo: Ben Hider. |
This is David (Dan Hodge), who, recording his words on a
small, digital recorder, uses the ensuing hour and 15 minutes to tell an
occasionally riveting tale of his experiences in Rwanda. That, of course, is
the tiny, impoverished, central African country tragically best known for its
1994 genocidal civil
war between the Tutsi and Hutu tribes. During the war, countless Tutsis were
ruthlessly slaughtered by forces controlled by the Hutu majority government.
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| Dan Hodge, Abou Lion Darria. Photo: Ben Hider. |
For the record: to Rwanda’s north is the larger Uganda, to
its east is the even larger Tanzania, to its south is the equally small
Burundi, and to its west is the much, much larger Democratic Republic of
the Congo.
A number of books and movies (most notably 2004’s Hotel Rwanda, starring Don Cheadle) have
told the story of this horrendous event. What new or little-known things will
we discover in this one-man play by Sean Christopher Lewis, directed by Frances
Hill and Peter Napolitano, seen last year in Philadelphia (as part of its
rolling world premiere), with the same actor but under different direction? Not
much, really.
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| Dan Hodge, Abou Lion Darria. Photo: Ben Hider. |
David says that he’ll be following a Rwandan custom in which
those needing to make a confession, even of something like lying or cheating, gather
their village folk together to inform them of what they’ve done. Seeking to make
amends for something, David needs to tell us his own story as though we were
his villagers, his “witnesses.” As he talks, his narrative’s varying emotional
levels are dramatically accentuated by Diarra’s awesomely accomplished drumming
and gently tuneful riffs on a small mouth organ; he even uses the rush fence to
create effective sounds.
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| Abou Lion Darria, Dan Hodge. Photo: Ben Hider. |
David starts by launching into a story about his dog Max and
girlfriend Amy, a poet, who recommended the animal as a therapeutic tool to
help him heal from the trauma of his Rwandan experiences, which he recounted in
a book he displays, Letters from the Red
Hill. This is the copy he received a year earlier with a note in it
claiming “There are untruths here.”
Choosing to ignore the note, he flew with Amy to Hawaii to
research an article about priests who do “forgiveness ceremonies.” After
witnessing these rites, which made everyone but him feel the good vibrations of
forgiveness, the note began to obsess him. Amy, unable to help him, walked out,
so he traveled to Rwanda to find its writer, someone he once knew called God’s
Blessing, so he could resolve the painful feelings it stirred in him.
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| Dan Hodge, Abou Lion Darria. Photo: Ben Hider. |
At this point, David begins recounting his memories of his 1994
visit to Uganda as one of a group of Christian missionary teenagers from Ohio. Among
them is a girl named Mary, for whom he’s now recording his story, and who participated
in the events. As he now and then reads from his memoir, David recalls his
culture shock on arriving, the manual labor he and his peers had to
do, and the lushness of the scenery. Then come the bodies, floating down the
river from neighboring Rwanda, and the beginning of David’s endless nightmare.
What follows reveals the several seriously dangerous
circumstances he and Mary encountered after meeting the shabby, bicycle-riding, Tutsi boy, God’s
Blessing, whose parents had been killed. Needing to flee, they followed him into Rwanda as he tried to help them all find safety. Since it’s unclear when we’ve moved from
Uganda to Rwanda, or even why, the narrative could be greatly improved with a better
depiction of the geographical aspects of the story, possibly by a projected
map.
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| Dan Hodge, Abou Lion Darria. Photo: Ben Hider. |
The tale moves back
and forth between David’s memories of 1994, those of the following years back in the States when he tried to resolve his stressful memories by the painful task of writing
about them, and what happened when he visited Rwanda 20 years later and learned
from God’s Blessing what his “untruths” were. Descriptions of terrible violence
are contrasted with the current presence of foreign investment and the placidity
of places where the greatest cruelty occurred and where a “tourism
of atrocity” has emerged.
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| Abou Darria Lion, Dan Hodge. Photo: Ben Hider. |
The big reveal about those untruths is not especially
eye-opening but it helps to express the playwright’s ultimate purpose of
exploring the nature of forgiveness and the human need to expunge guilt by some
form of contrition. He implies that the approach taken in Rwanda, which I’ll
not reveal, is a valuable one; it is also, as one can understand under the
circumstances, a necessary one.
Dogs of Rwanda’s
subject matter is intrinsically interesting but there’s little of historical or
political importance in it that even moderately well-informed audiences don’t
already know. Its greatest value lies in the opportunity it provides for an exciting solo
performance by a talented actor.
Hodge mostly satisfies its needs, offering a strong,
personable characterization of someone genuinely affected after having gone
through such indelible trauma. His major drawback is that he starts off on too
high a level, creating an aura of “performance” before he’s established himself
as a fellow human being, here to subtly bring us into his confessional vortex
before the blood and guts begin to flow.
OTHER VIEWPOINTS:
Urban Stages
259 W. 30th St., NYC
Through March 31