Lupita Nyong’o to Star in Off-Broadway Play by ‘Walking Dead’ Star Danai Gurira

The Oscar winner will make her New York stage debut in drama “Eclipsed” this fall at Public Theater

Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o will make her New York stage debut in the drama “Eclipsed,” The Public Theater announced on Thursday.

“The Walking Dead” star Danai Gurira wrote “Eclipsed,” which will be directed by Obie Award winner Liesl Tommy. Previews begin at Off Broadway’s The Public Theater on Sept. 29 and the show is currently scheduled to run through Nov. 8.

The play tells a story of survival and resilience in Africa. Amid the chaos of the Liberian Civil War, the captive wives of a rebel officer band together to form a fragile community — until the balance of their lives is upset by the arrival of a new girl (Nyong’o).

Nyong’o, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress last year for “12 Years a Slave,” will appear in this December’s “Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens” as well as next year’s live-action “The Jungle Book.”

Gurira, best known for playing sword-wielding Michonne on the AMC hit “The Walking Dead,” co-wrote and starred in the Off-Broadway play “In Continuum” in 2005.

Drawing on reserves of wit and compassion, “Eclipsed” reveals distinct women who must discover their own means of survival in this deeply felt portrait of women finding and testing their own strength in a hostile world of horrors not of their own making.

“Danai Gurira has written a brilliant play, ripped from the headlines, that looks at the terrible conflicts in post-colonial Africa with an eye that is both incisive and deeply compassionate,” Oskar Eustis, artistic director of The Public, said in a statement. “A feminist reading of the Liberian Civil War, a war that was ended by women, ‘Eclipsed’ is both heart-breaking and profoundly life-affirming. We are delighted to welcome the extraordinary Lupita Nyong’o to The Public in this vitally important play.”

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