ECLIPSED

A message from CTG’s resident dramaturg / literary manager

Pier Carlo Talenti, Center Theatre Group’s Resident Dramaturg and Literary Manager, is intimately involved in the development of many productions presented on our stages.  He is an integral part of the research process, providing historical and social context for each work and keeping an independent and critical eye on our creative activities. In this issue of INSIDER VIEWS, he discusses the Kirk Douglas Theatre’s world premiere of Danai Gurira’s Eclipsed.

Hello.

OK, so I cried.  About a year ago, I had just gotten to the last page of Danai Gurira’s play Eclipsed, and my tear ducts just started flowing.  This was odd for two reasons.  For one thing, without giving too much away, I think the play’s ending is fairly happy.  Also, it takes a lot to make me cry.  Unless there’s a kitten in peril or a captive killer whale just yearning for the big blue, chances are I’ll remain pretty stoic.

Yet as you yourself will see, each of the play’s five characters is so rich and in her own way so forceful that it is hard not to care wholeheartedly about her well-being.  For this is a play not only about war and its terrible toll on women but also about the courage it takes merely to hope for, envisage and finally create a better future.

Because for most of history, men have not only fought wars but have also been the ones to write about them, the role of women in war has largely been overlooked.  Yet in recent decades, due to the pervasiveness and variety of news media as well as the rise of female journalists, editors and historians, attention has finally been focused on the role of women in times of war.  We have been able to see with agonizing detail exactly how women are victimized in times of war, particularly through sexual violence.  Yet, in most of the world, as men are fighting, women also remain the soul of a nation or community, literally tending the home fires and raising the next generation, whom they have to struggle to clothe, feed and last of all educate in times of the direst need.

Liberia, in which Eclipsed is set, has its own remarkable history regarding women and war.  Just a few years ago, after two civil wars that lasted 14 years and caused unimaginable human suffering, women, most of them mothers, rose up en masse to shame the Liberian government and the rebel armies into accepting peace.  Yet there was also a flip side to the role of women in the Liberian conflict.  It is estimated that up to 35% of the fighting force on all sides consisted of young women and girls, most of whom had seen their families get murdered (or worse) during the first civil war and were determined never to be victims again.  In other words, while one generation of women was campaigning for peace, a younger generation was sowing terror with AK-47’s. 

Liberia has been at peace for six years now and as of 2005 has a woman president, the first and only female head of state on the African continent.  Thanks to Danai and the extensive interviews and research she herself conducted in Liberia, you will get to meet five remarkable Liberian women who are on the brink of a change for which they themselves think they may not be prepared.  If you are at all like me, you too will cry,  not from grief but from sheer astonishment at the persistence of hope even when absolutely all has been lost.

If you’d like to get a sneak peek at the time line of Liberian history that will be hanging in the theater lobby, please click here.

For a wonderful interview with playwright Danai Gurira on NPR, please click here. 

The New York Times recently published a special issue of its Magazine entitled Saving the World’s Women: How changing the lives of women and girls in the developing world can change everything.  The issue includes an interview with Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Liberia’s president.  The lead story, “The Women’s Crusade,” co-written by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn is both harrowing and galvanizing.  To access the special issue, please click here. 

Also, below please find links to the International Museum for Women regarding two women’s activist groups whom I’ve long admired, both of which are largely run by mothers and grandmothers.

• Argentina’s Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo
• The Nigerian Women’s Resistance

Thank you.

Pier Carlo Talenti
Resident Dramaturg / Literary Manager

Insider Views is the Kirk Douglas Theatre’s newsletter.  There is no regular schedule or standard format for it. You’ll receive it from time to time, when we have interesting, relevant or breaking news about our productions at the Douglas. 

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