Winter Miller is an award-winning playwright and founding member of the Obie-recognized collective 13 Playwrights. Her drama In Darfur (WAM’s 2014 Fall Show) was inspired by what she saw as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof’s researcher at the start of the genocide in Darfur in 2004. She then traveled with Kristof to villages and refugee camps along the Chad/Sudan border after winning the 2006 “Two-Headed Challenge” commission from the Guthrie Theater and the Playwrights’ Center. In Darfur premiered at The Public Theater for a sold-out run; a subsequent staged reading in the Public’s 1800-seat Delacorte Theater in Central Park – a first for a play by a woman – drew a standing-room-only crowd. Miller’s plays include The Penetration Play, The Arrival, Paternity, Amandine and Seed.  Miller is among the artist/activists participating in a panel discussion at WAM Theatre’s upcoming anniversary benefit event, CHANGE MAKERS, on August 24. Here is how she creates change…

What got you interested in working with WAM?

Combining social justice initiatives and/or activism alongside theater is a passion of mine.

Can you talk about a time when you experienced or participated in positive change being made through the arts?

I believe I can best tell you why I make theater, what drives me, and my definition of success by telling you a story about a young woman I met in Uganda in 2007 who has stayed in my mind. I have called her Dembe here, to respect her privacy.

Dembe looks at the ground when she speaks, mumbling her words and talking as if her listeners were buried in the blue-black folds of her neck. When I meet her, Dembe is sixteen and living with her mother, her grandmother and siblings or cousins in a mud hut about ten feet in diameter in an internally displaced person’s (IDP) camp in Northern Uganda. The Lord’s Resistance Army has victimized the region for more than 20 years, so Dembe has never known peace nor lived outside of the camp. Earlier this year, her father died from AIDS and the family is surviving on very little.

I have come to Uganda with a group of actors and filmmakers to make a documentary about the youth of Northern Uganda putting on a play about their lives. The goal is to create awareness about a forgotten war which keeps Ugandans imprisoned in camps, unable to find work, unable to live amongst their families and traditions, and has eroded the culture, traditions and hope of the Acholi people. I’ve been brought in as the resident playwright to spend three weeks with a group of 14 youth who have signed up to be part of this theater group and write them a play. At the last minute Dembe’s older sister is deemed too valuable to spare from gathering wood and other chores and Dembe is offered her sister’s slot.

We meet every day, but Sundays, the NGO day off, and we must be out of the camp by 4pm–security rules. The first week, Dembe says next to nothing and appears often to be staring into space. In a place where many people are hungry, Dembe’s belly is plump—not distended as the malnourished appear—so is she chubby or pregnant? We cannot ask direct questions, the youth can volunteer whatever information they want, but we are not to ask them leading questions. More importantly, how do we engage Dembe?

The youth come up with two plays they want to be written for them to perform. One is about preventing the spread of AIDS and the other is about welcoming back former child soldiers into the community. I work closely with the youth, interviewing them and doing improvs in order to incorporate their actual words into the text as a means of giving them ownership in the work. In the play about AIDS, Dembe is given the role of doctor. It’s an important role, as she must tell the boy and girl in the play the myths and truths about AIDS. The director asks Dembe (who is still talking to her neck), “Dembe, you are the doctor, what are some of the characteristics of a doctor?” Dembe whispers doctors are smart and powerful. So if Dembe is to play the doctor, (who, incidentally, is named Doctor Dembe) it appears Dembe is going to have to stand up straight, speak out into the world with confidence, for she is an important doctor. A transformation begins. Dembe begins to speak out in group exercises, to josh with the other youth and with us. Dembe the girl takes on some of the leadership and authority of Doctor Dembe.

On the day of the performance, for a crowd of upwards of a thousand IDPs, Dembe performs magnificently—she is clear, strong and authoritative. After, Dembe’s eyes meet the camera’s lens as she says, “My mother, she tell me she is proud of me. I feel strong, very strong.”

To me, this is gold. This is as rewarding as collaborating with some of the finest actors and directors at home in New York City. What’s more, Dembe taught me something I didn’t understand when I went to Africa a year prior, along the Chad/Darfur border (to interview survivors of genocide for my play In Darfur)—because there, I was taking their stories, but I was leaving them with nothing, just a promise that yes, I would tell their stories. What Dembe taught me, was that I could leave something substantial behind too. That theater, the experience of expressing oneself and building hope and community around a play is the kind of sustenance just as valuable as providing food, shelter, medicine and safety.

Some months later, I was on a panel about art and activism at NYU and I heard the great Ruby Dee perform a monologue I had written from the perspective of a Ugandan grandmother from this same trip I took. The power and range she brought to that monologue brought the audience to their feet. But it was more: yes, she took us to Uganda in an instant, but she was a doorway through which the audience could think not just about policy, but about the people on the ground and what their lives are like, an effective tool for galvanizing people to action.

How do you see the role of artist as activist affecting our world today?

I write dialogue in order to create dialogue. It’s the place where I have an audience to talk about injustice and possibility for change. Whether it’s the politics of sexuality or gender, or the politics of transracial adoption, motherhood or genocide, for me writing plays is a sneaky way into an audience’s consciousness to remind us that we are all deserving of dignity and the right to live free from violence.

What are you most looking forward to at WAM Theatre’s fifth season celebration, Change Makers?

Sometimes making art is or feels solitary, so I look forward to connecting with other people: activist artists and activist audiences and those who are just opening their eyes to suffering and to the power of art to heal.

Do you have a favorite quote–from a song, movie, book, poem, TV show, etc. that seems relevant to the subject of activism and art creating social change?

I have many. But here’s one for today, It’s a snippet of Ben Harper’s Better Way. Well, more than a snippet, because there was a lot to choose from:

What good is a man

Who won’t take a stand

What good is a cynic

With no better plan

Reality is sharp

It cuts at me like a knife

Everyone I know

Is in the fight of their life

Take your face out of your hands

And clear your eyes

You have a right to your dreams

And don’t be denied

I believe in a better way

What fictional, historical, or current public figure inspires you to take action and create positive change?

They’re everywhere, I see them everyday, on the street, in the news, telling stories. One in particular is Herculine Barbin, an intersexed person who was born in 19th century France. I’ve written a musical loosely inspired by Herculine’s short life called Amandine.

What advice would you give to women who are just starting to establish themselves in their artistic careers and looking to create positive change?

Find people who will encourage you to keep going; make sure you’re on the “right” side of the cause–ie if you’re raising money for an organization, make sure they’re an effective organization–if you can’t vet them yourself, rely on someone whose opinion you trust. A lot of well-intentioned money gets wasted; believe in your own good intentions and stay true to yourself; do not do harm to the people you’re writing about by publicizing their story if to have them identified would put them in jeopardy or further discomfort.

What current world issues are you most excited about exploring over the next year? Do you plan to use art in this exploration?

The right to abortion for every woman and girl: safe, affordable and without stigma.

Abortion providers: lives free from stigma and fear of violence against them. I’m writing a play about abortion, anyone who wants to support me in that effort, through stories or funding(!) should contact me: winterconnect(at)gmail.

How do you see the arts moving people to take action?

I see so much inaction, I can only hope art with a backbone, art that asks questions, art that asks viewers to examine their positions creates an increasingly aware populace. Sometimes people tell me they’ve been moved to engage in activism or are thinking about a subject or a people in an entirely new way. There’s no metric that measures how people respond to art and how it moves them to act, so I can’t answer other than what I’ve experienced first hand, through what people tell me or what I know from being a viewer.

Reserve your place now for WAM Theatre’s CHANGE MAKERS benefit on Sunday, August 24th at 7:00 pm.