How Playwright Winter Miller Got The Story Of 'In Darfur'

Rehearsal photo by Enrico Spada.

By Jeremy D. Goodwin She didn’t get there without an argument. Winter Miller, a playwright who’d been working as a research assistant to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, had finally gotten her boss to agree to let her join a trip to the border of Chad and Sudan, where refugees had taken shelter from the ongoing genocide in Darfur. Miller had been hearing endless stories of the atrocities there for two years, fact-checking drafts of Kristof’s much-read columns and remaining privy to details and survivors’ stories that never made it into print. So she planned a visit to see for herself in 2006, to do research for a play that might raise awareness about the ongoing atrocities. But a few days before departure, Kristof raised his objections again. It was a dangerous place, and it was best for Western visitors to travel light, in small groups. “The one thing I was pretty sure of was that taking someone who didn’t really need to be there was not a good idea," he later wrote about his thought process at the time. He had the world’s ear, and in fact would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the crisis. But his young assistant wanted to potentially put herself in harm’s way for lesser stakes.

Playwright Winter Miller (L) and director Kristen van Ginhoven. Photo by Enrico Spada.

The debate lasted “all the way until the airport," Miller says now. “No, I'm not an op-ed columnist. I write plays," she remembers telling him, “and I have all this information, and I've committed to going, so how about we just end this conversation here and I write the best play that I can possibly write?" They arrived at JFK airport and got on the plane. The resulting play, In Darfur, played the Public Theater in New York City in 2007, including one summertime staged reading at the famed Delacorte Theater. It makes its New England debut this week in a Berry Family Studio Production by WAM Theatre in Shakespeare & Company’s Elayne P. Bernstein Performing Arts Center, at the Berry Family Studio. WAM artistic director Kristen van Ginhoven will direct the seven-person cast. The play aims its gaze at issues of journalistic ethics as well as the particulars of the situation in Darfur, where the Sudanese military and paramilitary groups launched a campaign of so-called ethnic cleansing, including systematic rape, against non-Arabs. An estimated 300,000 people have been killed, and another 2 million displaced, in the ongoing conflict. In Darfur looks at an American journalist covering the crisis, confronted with the opportunity to rally world opinion but endangering her source in the process. Miller visited the region in a group of eight, including Kristoff and NBC correspondent Ann Curry. She spoke with refugees living semi-permanently in border camps, hearing their stories and seeking a way to dramatize the events in a way that would reflect the facts on the ground while staying compelling theater in its own right. She also injected a bit of unexpected humor.

Rehearsal photo by Enrico Spada.

“The most difficult part was how to convey what's happening when people donn't know much about it, but also keep the story moving," Miller says. “Some important facts were cut. Some good jokes were cut. It's all about what the container of the play is capable of holding, and being true to that — rather than pushing an agenda of all the things you want to say." Miller has also written about the arts for the Times, traveled to Uganda to write short plays for children to perform, and founded the (now-defunct) creative collaborative 13 Playwrights. In Darfur has been produced around the country and seeing it onstage has been the end result of a years-long process, including one very intense field trip. In the end, was it a particularly difficult play to write? “I sort of felt called to tell the story. And the story was telling itself, but what was difficult," Miller says, “was the question 'Who am I to tell this story? Do I have the right to?' And for me, I answered that by asking 'who am I not to?'" For his part, Kristof has enthusiastically plugged the play in his column and on his blog. Apparently it made sense to make room for one extra traveler, after all. In Darfur Through November 16 WAM Theater at Berry Family Studio, Elayne P. Bernstein Center 70 Kemble Street, Lenox