Walking Dead's Danai Gurira: 'There's a dearth of African female perspectives' 

Danai Gurira: ‘We have at the core a commonality.’ Photograph: Dan Monick/Corbis Outline

Last modified on Friday 16 October 2015 06.03 EDT

wo women are talking in a bullet-ridden room against a backdrop of a torn Liberian flag. One is standing while braiding the other’s hair. A radio, a lamp and a bucket are a few of the scant belongings of these two women. So begins Danai Gurira’s play Eclipsed, a story about five women shortly before the end of the second Liberian civil war.

Gurira, a Zimbabwean-American, known for the role of the sword-wielding zombie slicer Michonne in AMC’s The Walking Dead, wears many hats including playwright, director and founder of a non-profit organization, Almasi Arts.

“An African woman who tells a story in a dramatic way is always someone I want to put in my work, its been exciting for us to reconnect,” Gurira said of casting Lupita Nyong’o, who she has known since 2007.

“She wanted to get back on the stage and she always loved the play, it was a meant-to-be kind of situation. It was all about timing.”

Pascale Armand, Lupita Nyong’o, and Saycon Sengbloh in Eclipsed. Photograph: Joan Marcus

The timing wasn’t quite right for the pair when Nyong’o was a student at Yale, where she was an understudy for the same role in 2009 when it was staged at Yale Repertory Theatre. As a first-year student, Nyong’o could not audition or act in that production or other projects in which Gurira wanted to cast her. But Gurira and the women in the play befriended Nyong’o and took her under their wings. In 2012 Nyong’o was cast in the movie 12 Years a Slave, won an Academy Award and after a busy year things have come full circle, with Nyong’o starring in Gurira’s off-Broadway show.

The cast also includes Akosua Busia, Pascale Armand, Saycon Sengbloh and Zainab Jah and their portrayals of the women who survive the best way they can during a horrific war has impressed during previews.

The idea of Eclipsed came when Gurira first saw a New York Times article in 2003 about the Liberian war. The cover featured female rebel fighters during the height of the war. Growing up in postwar independent Zimbabwe, she had lived a very different life than the women who were wearing tight jeans, little tops and holding AK-47s. She was intrigued by the story behind the picture and wanted to know more. In 2007, Gurira received a grant to travel to Liberia where she conducted the core of her research for the play.

The women, mired in the civil war in which they lose their identity, are nameless until the end. Yet each character is distinct and relatable despite the alien setting for the audience. Gurira says her goal is to eliminate that otherness.

“My artistic mandate is to obliterate that concept and to illustrate the fact that human similarity exists regardless of geography, regardless of race, regardless of ethnic experiences. We have at the core a commonality,” she says.

In bringing the play to a western audience Gurira wants to bridge the superficial gap that exists between the African continent and the west. She is glad there are more portrayals of the African conflicts in movies such as Hotel Rwanda.

She adds: “There has been a dearth that has shown the African female perspective, even though we are in a time period where four African women have received peace prizes and have worked hard to bring an end to the conflicts.”

Danai Gurira as Michonne and Lennie James as Morgan in The Walking Dead. Photograph: Gene Page/AMC

She says there are African women now creating for the screen and online. She referred to Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Zimbabwean writer NoViolet Bulawayo, as examples of African women creating on the page. However, she says there is a lot more stories that need to be amplified especially around the narrative of African women.

In 2011, Gurira co-founded Almasi Arts to do that and empower “African males and females to subjectively tell their story and to have it told skillfully on a global level”.

The non-profit organization trains artists and provides opportunities for them to develop on a professional level. Almasi holds workshops, training and productions for artists, as well as taking American artists to Zimbabwe and bringing Zimbabwean artists to the United States to develop their talents.

Gurira’s plays celebrate the African voice. She won the Obie award, an Outer Critics Circle award and Helen Hayes award for the play In the Continuum. She also wrote the 2012 play The Convert and Familiar, which will be staged in February 2016 in New York. On staging plays in theaters for US audiences, Gurira says it depends on what theaters connect to and whether they believe in an artist’s work, as well as how those relationships develop and that’s specific to who the writer is and how they are telling their story.

Before starring in The Walking Dead, Gurira’s plays were produced and staged in theaters across the country. The actor and playwright has been busy with the play’s opening as well as the TV show’s sixth season, which premiered on Sunday.

Gurira says Michonne has evolved: “She has been figuring out how to temper her strength for the greater good and what’s going to help people she cares about.” She enjoys playing the role because her “power and strength is undeniable and more and more she is unveiling her heart”. On her character’s popularity she tries to give Michonne as much truth and fullness and is thankful that people respond to that.

“I love being in the show and I love the collaboration I get to have in very different ways with artists and as actor on a TV show,” she says.

Fans might be surprised to learn that Gurira hates horror movies, though she is not scared of her own show and had not watched it before auditioning. For those who aren’t fans of the zombie hit, Gurira’s plays offer something that could be more palatable.

Eclipsed opens on 14 October at the Public Theater, New York

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