The Cries of the Wolves
Lab Theatre, Calvin College
Feb. 4-6, 11-13
$5-$10
calvin.edu/academic/cas/ctc, (616)526-6282

Sudan gets press. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't strangers to the media's limelight. But when it comes to the War in the North Caucasus, also known as the Russian-Chechan Conflict, how many of us have heard about the tens of thousands killed and hundreds of thousands displaced?

Chechnya is a small country in the mountainous North Caucasus region with a population of more than one million. Its contentious relationship with Russia dates back to the 19th century, when Russia annexed Chechnya into its expanding empire and subjected Chechnya to Russian governance. Since then, whenever Russia has suffered internal uncertainty, Chechnyan separatists have rallied for independence, and Russian authorities have responded heavy-handedly. The results are never pretty.

Chechnya tried to secede following the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. This led to the First Chechnyan War of 1994-96 and later the Second Chechnyan War of 1999, which has only just recently come to a halt at the end of this past year. Throughout these little-known events, guerrilla warfare, terrorist-style bombings, and human rights abuses have been common occurrences. The wars have taken the lives of more civilians than fighters and forced 40 percent of Chechnyans to leave their homes.

Recent Calvin College-graduate Moriah Ophardt first learned of this dark chapter in Chechnyan history five years ago while working at an English-teaching camp in Berlin. There, many of the students were Chechnyan refugees. While Ophardt tutored them in English, they tutored her in the history of the ongoing Russian-Chechnyan conflict that had driven them to Berlin. Her immediate response was, "Why is this news to me? How come so few people know about this? What can I do?"

Determined to help but uncertain just how, Ophardt returned to Michigan. As a college student, she devoted all her free time to theatre, acting, choreographing, and designing costumes for productions such as Sense and Sensibility, The Tempest, Dead Man Walking, and The Government Inspector. In theatre, she found the answer to her quandaries about the unknown stories of her Chechnyan refugee friends. She then began writing a play.

The script would take her five years to complete, working on it in whatever open spaces she could find in her congested schedule of college courses and theatre productions. The script's completion also required another trip to the English camp in Berlin. Funded by a grant from her school, this time, instead of teaching English, Moriah along with fellow student Brandon DeWyn interviewed and filmed the testimonies of Chechnyan refugees. Together their testimonies form the basis for her first play, The Cries of Wolves, directed by Michael Page, which will run Feb. 4-6 and 11-13 in Calvin's Lab Theatre.