Our lives are attended by remarkable beauty, a beauty that extends to the dark things. I have come to see that light and darkness are dependent on each other. There is a tenderness that emerges when you come to love both.

-Adam Wolpert, artist-presenter, Arts in [...]]]>

Adam Wolpert: "Untitled #10"

Our lives are attended by remarkable beauty, a beauty that extends to the dark things. I have come to see that light and darkness are dependent on each other. There is a tenderness that emerges when you come to love both.

-Adam Wolpert, artist-presenter, Arts in the One World Conference, 2010

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Outside a rural classroom on a summer night in Uganda, four young women talk to a group of artists about the reign of terror they experienced under  The Lord’s Resistance Army.  Their only source of light is a single battery-powered bulb.

“It was a theatrical setting,” says playwright and teacher  Eric Ehn. “One by one they spoke: Suzanne, Winnie, Belle Rose and Scovia. They were  part of a community of people who had experienced trauma at a level unknown to the rest of us. ”

A child from Northern Uganda photo credit: Joseph Michael

The community consisted of former child soldiers, war orphans, and others affected by war.  As part of their therapy, they were encouraged to speak freely about their war-time experiences, including the atrocities some of them committed as child soldiers.

The artists listening to the testimonies included Cal Arts students who were in Uganda and Rwanda on a summer study tour led by Eric Ehn and organized by the  California Insitute of the Arts in collaboration with the Interdisciplinary Genocide Studies Center in Rwanda (IGSC).   Its aim was to consider the toll of genocide and explore ways that art can help at-risk populations.  (Until 2009, Eric Ehn was dean of the School of Theatre at Cal Arts; he currently heads the playwriting department at Brown University.)

“Their stories were harrowing,” says Ehn, admitting that the testimonies were difficult to hear.   “I felt I was at risk of being a pornographer in a therapeutic session…There was something about me that felt like a butcher.”

Ehn incorporated some of his memories from that night into his new work,  Dogsbody. The play takes a journey to the dark side to explore of our human capacity for extreme violence.  Set near  Texas oil refineries,  the play describes unspeakable acts committed by child soldiers:   “A girl shoots another child to test her archery skills. Two children kill and dismember their father.  A boy plays soccer with a human head.” (S.F. Chronicle)

He says that Dogsbody doesn’t look for answers to the cause of genocide: “It is about violence itself – violence that is unredeemed and unexamined.  It’s about the damage. “

Eric Ehn, Credit: John Abromowski/Brown University

During a presentation at this year’s Arts in the One World Conference, he said that the purpose of genocide is “to crush, to set people adrift.”  Extreme acts of violence separates people from the things that make them human: home, family, culture:  “When you can’t face [your family, your ancestors and community] anymore, you are stuck.”

How can artists shed light on unspeakable acts of violence that cause inimaginable trauma?  Can the act of creating art  heal and renew affected communities?

Ehn believes that artists must avoid the safe and easy path:  “In the face of genocide and extreme disaster we tend to look for an emotional upheaval that will lead us to a quick resolution.”  We see a Haitian mother crying on TV at the site where her children died in rubble of an earthquake.  We give money and expect the problem will be solved. But the situation is complex.

“Haiti was a natural disaster that laid bare an economic disaster,” he says, explaining that solutions are not always possible in the face of extreme violence and upheaval.  You can’t bring a dead child back to life; you can’t un-murder a parent or un-rape a neighbor’s wife. .   He says artists have to engage such situtations  “with complexity,” accepting  that they can both “know” and “not know” the damge these situations cause.The job of the artist is to reveal the damage, not find a solution.

In the face of harrowing testimonies like the ones Cal Arts students heard in Uganda and Rwanda, the best initial response may be “prayerful silence.”  Silence can open a space that allows people to be themselves and to believe in themselves.

“Silence is the most perfect gesture of inclusion.  It is like the darkness of the theatre.” - Eric Ehn