• Born Valentines Day 1978, to parents (Librarian and Professor of Chemistry) who were born and raised in the colony of South Rhodesia, a landlocked self-governing British colony in southern Africa that was established in 1923. Parents moved to Iowa in 1964 to work at Grinnell College.

• December 1983, age of 5, Gurira family moves back to what is now Zimbabwe after the country gained independence. Moved to Harare, the capital city.

• Attended a private Catholic all girls school, and originally intended to study political science; she was an activist well before she found the arts. She fell in love with theatre during a study abroad in college when she went to South Africa. She had grown up next to South Africa in Zimbabwe, but had never been before; it was right after Apartheid ended. She applied to go to the Political program, but they were full, so they sent her to the Arts and Social Change program. She was initially put out, but she fell in love with the artists around her, and with art as a tool for activism.

• Used her US citizenship to attend Macalester College in Saint Paul Minnesota, where she got a degree in Psychology, then went to NYU Tisch to get a MFA in Acting. She got an agent out of her masters program, and went to film auditions because that was what she was told to do; she began work on her first fame-making role on The Walking Dead because she saw the character (Michonne) as a variation of the women she had interviewed for Eclipsed; a woman in a warzone doing whatever it took to survive.

• Her role in Black Panther was a huge coup for her personally, as it is important to her to elevate African stories specifically.

• One of her first big performances in college was in For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enuf.

• She started writing plays because she wanted better roles as an actress; no one was writing the work she wanted to do, so she started writing it herself.

Summary of Action

Eclipsed takes place in the country of Liberia in 2003 at a bullet-ridden one room shack, which serves as an army camp for the rebel group called Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD), which aimed to depose Charles Taylor, the then president of Liberia. The unseen Commanding Officer kidnaps two young women (Helena & Bessie) and makes them his "wives" by forcing them to have sex with him whenever he wants it. The women are helping to care for a bright 15-year-old (The Girl), who has also been abducted and raped after being discovered by the C.O.

Soon, Maima, a former wife, returns from the battlefield, where she was fighting as a soldier. She tries to convince The Girl to leave the C.O. and become a soldier with her. Rita, who works for a peace organization, makes occasional visits at the compound to end conflict. The Girl now seems to resign herself to her new life in the compound with limited options to choose from—stay with an abusive C.O. or become a soldier, while the others will try to make sense of this difficult situation.

Educational Purposes

Useful in discussing the absence of African drama in the western canon, the position of women in war dramas, what we expect from an all-female play.

SAMPLE QUESTIONS TO BUILD DISCUSSION:

• What, if anything, did you know about the country of Liberia before reading the cultural context, and the play?

• What other plays, if any, can you name that take place in Africa?

• What do you think of when you think of a war drama?

• What choices do these five women actually have?

• What role do traditions play in our personal identities?

• Do you think The Girl went with Rita or Maima? Why?

• What are your sensory memories from reading this play; what stands out to you as necessary if you were to stage it?

• Who is the strongest character? Who is the weakest? Why?

• What kind of man is the Commanding Officer? How old do you think he is?

• Of these five women, which do you think you are the most like?

• Where do you think these five women would be in 2022, 19 years after the end of the play?

Sample Activity

Have students interview someone in their life, and use it as the basis for a fictional story

• • Ask students to interview someone in their life about an event that changed their lives; examples include fighting in a war, falling in love, going to college, moving to a new city, and so on. Ask them to take notes on the interview in a journal, which they will then bring into class until the end of the unit.

  • Using their interview notes as inspiration, students should brainstorm a story that involves the event they were told, but that isn't about the person they interviewed (for example, instead of them writing the story of their mother moving to New York from Michigan, they should write a story about a fictional person moving from Michigan to New York)

    • • • Question to consider: What about this event is unique to my interviewee, and what is universal?

  • After some free-write sessions, have the students adapt their brainstorm into a brief one page story, adding or embellishing details for dramatic effect. What changes do they choose to make from their interviewees life, and what details do they choose to keep? What is the overall message of the story?

In The Continuum

In The Continuum (2008)

Useful in discussing the concept of Blackness in and out of the US, HIV stigma, domestic violence and non violent forms of domestic abuse

Eclipsed (2010)

Useful in discussing the absence of African drama in the western canon, the position of women in war dramas, what we expect from an all female play

The Convert (2012)

Explores Colonialism in South Africa, and how Christianity can be used as a cultural disrupter, it is essentially a blend of Eclipsed and Familiar when looking for talking points when using it as an educational tool; how race and religion can be used as cudgels to remove power from disenfranchised groups, in particular women. Religion as ritual, and what it means to resist that ritual. Telling the story of colonization through the eyes of the colonized.

Familiar (2015)

Useful in discussion how race, religion, and generation difficulties intersect, as well as how the immigrant experience affects one's identity vs. how that identity shifts for first gen children. Tradition as ritual.

Gurira, D. (2001). Running head: The neglect of Black Women in Psychology.

Gurira, D. (2015). Familiar. Theatre Communications Group.

Gurira, D. (2017). Eclipsed (revised Tcg edition). Theatre Communications Group.

Gurira, D. (2022). The Convert. METHUEN.

Gurira, D., & Salter, N. (2008). In the Continuum. Samuel French.

Lunden, J. (2006, February 13). Two women, one story 'in the Continuum'. NPR. Retrieved March 21, 2022, from https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5202209

Lunden, J. (2016, March 12). 'zimerican' playwright Danai Gurira brings African stories to American stages. NPR. Retrieved March 21, 2022, from https://www.npr.org/2016/03/12/469220332/zimerican-playwright-danai-gurira-brings-african-stories-to-american-stages

Martin, M. (2018, February 17). Danai Gurira on her 'black panther' role: 'she protects what we would have been'. NPR. Retrieved March 21, 2022, from https://www.npr.org/2018/02/17/586172340/danai-gurira-on-her-black-panther-role-she-protects-what-we-would-have-been

Netflix. (n.d.). Off Camera; Danai Gurira. Off Camera. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0siUA-cUsq4&list=PL3AUS4PSeKCR3qo_xzDuVWIqVbrxhE0eP&index=8

Nigh, K. J. (2016). Eclipsed by Danai Gurira. Theatre Journal, 68(3), 459–461. https://doi.org/10.1353/tj.2016.0082

NPR. (2009, September 8). 'eclipsed' brings story of Liberian Civil War to stage. NPR. Retrieved March 21, 2022, from https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112636506

Tran, D. (n.d.). From ‘The Walking Dead’ to ‘Eclipsed,’ Danai Gurira Is Killing It. American Theatre. Retrieved from https://www.americantheatre.org/2016/01/26/between-the-walking-dead-and-eclipsed-danai-gurira-is-killing-it/.

Web page compiled by Margaret Hall (2022)