Last week I had the opportunity to interview a truly inspirational figure: Congolese journalist Chouchou Namegabe. As part of my background research, I attended a staged reading at the Kennedy Center of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Ruined,” by Lynn Nottage, hosted by the Enough Project. It was a very powerful piece of theater.

It got me thinking about the power of art and artists to stand outside a situation and bring a unique lens to certain aspects or issues we otherwise overlook. Sometimes, that lens can help focus attention when we grow complacent. Sometimes, it is a lens powerful enough to change the world.

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin immediately leaps to mind. Her novel depicted the cruelties and inhumanity of slavery so vividly that it shocked many Americans into taking up the cause of abolition. Supposedly, when President Abraham Lincoln met Stowe after the onset of the Civil War he said, “so this is the little lady who made this big war.” Pablo Picasso’s Guernica depicting the trauma to civilian life under the Franco regime in Spain is another famous example of art as social criticism and an incitement to change.

“Ruined” tells the story of women living amidst the chaos and violence of the ongoing civil war and rebel conflicts in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Although the title refers to the female characters who have been the victims of rape and violent sexual mutilation, the story is also about survival and human resiliency in situations of indescribable horror.

One scene underscores the idea that democracy as an ideal and democracy in practice are very different things. Elections alone are not enough to ensure the safety and freedom of people. DRC actually held internationally-endorsed elections in 2006 that were largely non-violent and without major irregularities. Fighting continues today, however, and the elected government faces overwhelming political and security challenges.

Of course, the real power of the play and the lens Nottage brings to the conflict in DRC is the stories of the women fighting to scratch out an existence, however meager, in the middle of what the U.N. has termed the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” I point you to this gut-wrenching monologue from one of the characters in the show describing her assault, and this piece, which gives more background on the play and the conflict in DRC. Do you have other examples of particularly moving pieces of art, theater, or literature as a force for change in your country?