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The brutal surrealism of impending genocide in Rwanda envelops an American family in J.T. Rogers' The Overwhelming. Here's an inside guide to the play and its haunting historical context.
by John Istel
Playwright J.T. Rogers begins writing a play when he has questions he can't readily answer. One of the questions that prompted The Overwhelming may never have an adequate response: What could anyone have done to stop the genocidal carnage that resulted in the deaths of upward of 800,000 Rwandans?
To understand the context of this 1994 event, Rogers read Rwandan history, researched news accounts of the atrocities, and talked to participants. He suggested that his agent send the completed script to London's National Theatre, and a few months later, while the young, relatively unknown dramatist was changing his son's diaper in his Brooklyn home, artistic director Nicholas Hytner telephoned. The National liked the play and wanted Max Stafford-Clark to direct. Within a week he was in London planning a trip to Rwanda to do research. “It really was like I was in a fairy tale.”
The Overwhelming is more a cautionary tale. With Stafford-Clark directing an American cast, the play begins performances at the Laura Pels this fall. It tells the story of an American family who find themselves trapped in the complexities of Rwandan politics on the eve of the sickeningly surreal spring of 1994.
What does the title mean? “In the late 19th century,” Rogers explains, “Belgian King Leopold II annexed basically all of what's known as the Congo and turned it into a vast strip mine to line his pockets. He ruled through conquest and subjugation; at least one million Congolese died. It was truly a holocaust. These Africans had never seen white people and were completely shell-shocked by the nightmare that their lives became. In doing research, I discovered that along the Congo/Rwanda border in East Africa, the only word they had that could describe this horrible experience was lokeli, which translates as 'the overwhelming.' Hopefully, it's also something that describes what every character in the play is feeling, too.”
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HISTORICAL REALITY: A Timeline
1300s
Tutsis migrate into what is now Rwanda, which was already inhabited by the Twa and Hutu peoples.
1600s
Tutsi King Ruganzu Ndori subdues central Rwanda and outlying Hutu areas. The ethnic distinctions between Tutsi and Hutu eventually evolve more along class lines than racial ones. They share languages, traditions, religions, and villages, but Tutsi own cattle and land and are therefore more wealthy; Hutus are generally farmers and work the fields. Although there are other slight differences, identity is fairly fluid. Hutus who amass enough resources and status may become Tutsi and vice versa.
1850s
The first European explorers reach the country.
1918
Belgian troops occupy the land during World War I.
1926
Belgian colonial government requires ethnic identity cards. Rwandans are now officially designated either Tutsi or Hutu. In the case of intermarriage, identity comes from the father.
1957
The Hutu majority, feeling oppressed, protest Rwanda’s power structure and begin to form political parties.
1959
Hutus gain power, overthrowing ruling Tutsi king and kill thousands of Tutsis and send more than 150,000 into exile.
1962 (July 1)
Rwanda gains its independence under a Hutu president.
1990 (October)
A force consisting of exiled Tutsis called the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) begins fighting to overthrow the Hutu government.
1993 (August)
Rwandan President Habyarimana signs Arusha Accords in Tanzania calling for a cease-fire.
1994 (April)
An airplane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and neighboring Burundi is shot down in what is considered a political assassination. The party responsible has never been determined—the two prime suspects are Hutu extremists, who saw Habyarimana’s peace and power-sharing agreement as a sell-out, or the rebel Tutsi insurgents. The event incites the RPF to start a major military offensive while the Hutu extremists use it as a pretext to begin a planned extermination of all Tutsi and moderate Hutus. In the next few months, the Hutu citizen militias and Rwandan military accomplish much of this goal, most of the slaughter inflicted by machetes and masues, clubs with nail studs at their end. The RPF takes back the country and stops the genocide via a 14-week civil war.
1995
A United Nations-appointed tribunal begins leveling charges and sentencing people responsible for the Hutu-Tutsi atrocities.
1998 (March)
President Clinton flies to Rwanda and in a speech apologizes to the survivors for the world’s inaction.
Primary sources: BBC News and the Out of Joint Company, co-producer of the National Theatre production (www.outofjoint.co.uk/education/overwhelming_pack.pdf)
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The script of The Overwhelming, containing more than 40 scenes in two acts, takes place in and around Rwanda's capital city, Kigali.
Eleven actors play an international host of characters, including the weak Western presence represented by a French diplomat, a United Nations' peacekeeping officer, and a mid-level U.S. embassy official; the Exleys, a typically fractured American family: a dad, his teenage son, and the boy's new stepmother; and Rwandans, (both Hutu and Tutsi) of various political sympathies.
The play centers on Jack Exley, the down-on-his-luck professor of international relations. Struggling to get tenure, he's taken a leave to complete a book about different grass-roots activists who he feels have altered the great flow of history through their small individual actions. Jack doesn't mean mythic heroes like Nelson Mandela or Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr., but everyday people like a couple in Peru who've adopted 12 kids. “One pebble redirects the river!” he idealistically exclaims early in the play.
Jack believes Joseph Gasana, his old college roommate who is now a doctor running an AIDS clinic for children in Kigali, is an example of this “local heroism” at work. Jack's cockeyed American optimism, unfortunately, shatters under the grim complexities at work in Rwanda. Jack is accompanied by his second wife, Linda, an African-American journalist, and his teenage son, who has barely recovered from the death of his mother in an automobile accident in which he was the driver.
PERSONAL REALITY:
A Diary Excerpt
In February 2006, J.T. Rogers and Max Stafford-Clark flew to Rwanda's capital to do research before rehearsals began for the premiere of The Overwhelming in London. Here is a short excerpt from the playwright's journal.
Sunday February 5, 2006
Kigali
We fly in low from Nairobi on a hundred-seater jet. As we enter Rwanda, crossing over Lake Victoria, the landscape becomes green; hills as far as the eye can see.
Kigali International airport is tiny: only four other planes, three small propeller aircrafts, are parked on the tarmac. None look like they’ve flown recently...
...The city is smaller than I realized and seems to cluster on two hills, no center at all. Driving through I understand why the Brandt guidebook (the only one there is) says there’s not much to do here and that one should get out into the country as soon as you can...
...We check in at the Hôtel des Mille Collines (a setting used in the play). I find an information pack from the local travel company through which our flights were booked. In the section titled “Rwandan Travel Fact Sheet” is information on the climate, rate of exchange, tipping policy, and the following paragraph—under the heading “Genocide-Sensitive Travel”:
Photographing genocide sites and memorials is usually acceptable and sometimes encouraged. However, we recommend you always seek guidance of your guide first. It is generally acceptable to talk to Rwandans about the genocide, however be sensitive and never push the subject. You must also accept that some Rwandans will not want to speak about it and you must respect this at all times. Accept that the genocide is far beyond your own experience and is never something you will ever understand.
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