Danai Gurira’s Eclipsed takes place in 2003, during the final year of Liberia’s Second Civil War.  Below, we have compiled a digest of articles chronicling Liberia throughout that year, including articles that provide general context, as well as items devoted specifically to the effects of war on women and children.   (For a more distilled play-by-play of Liberia in 2003, please see this blog post.)

Liberia: International Contact Group Urges Government and Rebels to Hold Ceasefire Talks
UN New York, Mar 1, 2003

Representatives of countries concerned about the situation in Liberia have issued a statement urging ceasefire talks between the country’s Government and the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). More...

The Golden Tulip Declaration of Liberian Women Attending the Peace Talks in Accra
Accra, Ghana, 15 March 2003

Preamble
We, the representatives of the various Liberian Women’s Organizations at the Accra Peace Talks on Liberia held a one-day Strategic Planning Meeting under the Chairmanship of Her Excellency Madame Ruth Sando Perry on Friday 15th Day of August A.D. 2003 at the Golden Tulip Hotel in Accra to analyse lessons learnt at the Accra Peace Talks from 4 June 2003 to present and to strategize on the inclusion of women within all existing and proposed institutions including all components of the current and in-coming Liberian Government (Executive, Legislative and Judiciary) and within all structures to lead the post conflict peace building process.  More…

Charles Taylor-Preacher, Warlord, and President
BBC International, June 04, 2003
By Mark Doyle, BBC World Affairs Correspondent

Charles Taylor is a frustrated showman.

There is nothing this naturally confident man would like more than to strut the African stage playing the flamboyant statesman.  More…

UN-Backed Sierra Leone Court Indicts Liberian President Charles Taylor
UN New York, June 4, 2003

A United Nations-backed court in Sierra Leone announced today that it has indicted Liberian President Charles Taylor for war crimes and issued an international warrant for his arrest.  More…

LIBERIA: Child Soldiers are Back on the Frontline
IRINnews Africa, June 9, 2003
© UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2003

ABIDJAN, - As Liberian President Charles Taylor fights for his very survival, child soldiers, many of them orphans of the conflict, are back at the forefront of the fighting. Every day they can be seen riding around the streets of the capital Monrovia in pick-up trucks proudly toting their automatic rifles.  More…

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Before rehearsals began, McCarter Literary manager Carrie Hughes spoke with playwright Danai Gurira about her inspiration for Eclipsed.

What inspired you to write Eclipsed?

I’ve always had a passion for telling African women’s stories.  I feel like it’s a very underexplored area.  Being an African woman, having grown up and been raised around African women, but having lived half my life in the west, I’ve always been curious as to why our stories aren’t more told.  So I’ve taken it on myself to do whatever I can do to contribute to a cannon of work that is kind of thin.  That’s the reason I tend to generally veer toward African women’s stories.

It was really an image that struck me concerning Liberian women and war.  I was rehearsing another play in my final year of grad school at NYU and my director showed me a NY Times article that had a picture of the Liberian woman rebel fighter, Black Diamond. She’s quite well known at this point and her corps of women was quite feared during the Liberian war.  I became very intrigued and marveled at these women and how rarely we hear and see the stories of women and war and their role therein, specifically African women.  We always hear about African war, but we never really hear about women and how they navigate and survive a war terrain. So that spurred my interest and it went from there.

You were talking about the photo that inspired you.  Can you talk about that a little bit, what it looked like?

It was basically a bunch of women, Black Diamond and her army of women, who were member of the women’s fighting core of LURD, which was a faction of the rebel fighters. They were all standing there beautifully, very funkily clad, in jeans and slinky tops and berets and their hair was all well done, and they all had AK-47s slung over their shoulders and very steely glares as they looked in to the camera. I honestly had never seen such an image of African women in my life, so it was really the image that got me completely enthralled.

Now your first play, In the Continuum, also dealt with African women, but you performed in it as well as writing it.  With Eclipsed you’re just the playwright-it’s the first play you’ve written where you’re just the playwright.  How do you think your background as an actress and as someone who has written for yourself affects you as you sit down to write a play where you’re just going to be a playwright?

I think it gives me a very specific type of empathy that affects what I’m putting in people’s mouths. I want to give them things to play with that are interesting, that have depth, things that have action, that give life to a character.  I don’t want to put too much burden on an actor, but I want them to have something fun to play, something very challenging.  As an actor, I want to be challenged and have some rich strong material to deal with.  I realize I’ve been working that way with Eclipsed, trying to create work that gives actors a lot to do, especially actors who I feel are rarely given a lot do.

And by that you mean African-American women, especially young African-American women?

Women of African diaspora.  I love to employ women of the diaspora.

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Danai Gurira’s Eclipsed takes place in 2003, during the final year of Liberia’s Second Civil War.  Below, we have created timelines of contemporary Liberian history and provided summaries of some of the war’s major players, including Charles Taylor, LURD, and the Liberian Women’s Initiative.  (For a more in-depth information, stay tuned for an upcoming entry which features a digest of Liberian current events throughout 2003.)

A Condensed Early History of Liberia

In 1816, prominent Americans found The Society for the Colonization of Free People of Color of America (also known as the American Colonization Society) to facilitate the return of “Africans in America” to Africa.  The first ACS ship arrives on the coast of what will become Liberia and settlers stake their claim in 1821, meeting resistance from the indigenous people.  A series of wars between settlers (and their descendents) and the native tribes (including the Dei, Bassa, Kru, Vai, and Grebo) rage off and on for the next hundred years.  This tension-and the continued economic and political power of settlers’ descendents (called Americo-Liberians) at the expense of the indigenous people-remains a dominant current throughout Liberian history.

Timeline of Contemporary Liberian History

1979—Liberian President William Tolbert refuses citizens the right to non-violently protest his increase on the cost of rice; a violent “Rice Riot” begins, resulting in over forty deaths.

1980—Non-commissioned officers in Liberia’s armed forces stage a coup, assassinating Tolbert and creating a military government, People’s Redemption Council (PRC), with Master-Sergeant Samuel K. Doe, a member of the Krahn tribe, as head of state.

1980-9—The Doe Era, marked by instability and ethnic conflict.  Foreign anxiety regarding violent overthrow instigates a downward economic spiral; despite this, government wages increase, amplifying Liberia’s national debt.

1989—Charles Taylor, a former government official under Doe, and his National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) leads insurgency against Doe and attack government posts in Nimba County.  Beginning of Great War/First Civil War.

1990—Following a dispute with Taylor, Prince Johnson and others separate from the NPFL and form Independent NPFL (INPFL).   INPFL captures and kills Doe; four warlords, including Taylor, claim the presidency.

1992—NPFL initiates “Operation Octopus” and attacks ECOMOG, a cease-fire monitoring group organized by ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States.  Many rebel factions emerge.

1993—Cotonou Peace Accord provides for Liberian Transitional Government that includes faction representatives and civilians, and organizes the processes of disarmament and democratic elections.  Fighting continues in the countryside.

1994—Founding of Liberian Women’s Initiative, one of many women’s organizations that advocates peace.

1996—War arrives in Monrovia; cease-fire begins in September; end of First Civil War; Ruth Perry leads transitional government.

1997—Election: Taylor wins the presidency (70%); his National Patriotic Party (NPP) wins 21 of 26 Senate Seats and 49 of 64 House seats.

1999—Liberian government observes large military movement of rebel Liberian soldiers in Sierra Leone; the rebels eventually seize most of Lofa County.  The group is eventually discovered to be LURD, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy, a recently emerged faction.

2000—US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Thomas Pickering and other international delegates meet in Monrovia and declare that if civil war does not cease, Liberia will be recognized as an international pariah.

2002—Taylor declares State of Emergency; many flee Monrovia as LURD troops encroach.

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Eclipsed will change the way you think about war…

As McCarter’s Director of High School Programs, I am responsible for writing the educational content for our audience resource guides, and I also facilitate many of the post-show discussions for the student matinees.  A significant focus in my approach to preparing educational materials and curricula, is deciding what our student audiences and their teachers might need to prepare them for the production and/or to enrich their experience of the play in performance.

After reading Danai Gurira’s Eclipsed and seeing a directed reading with actors, it was immediately clear to me that what our student audiences—and perhaps our general IN-Festival audience—might need to prepare themselves for this remarkable and moving play:

• knowledge about the plight of women in Liberian through what playwright Danai Gurira refers to as “twenty years of on again, off again wars”

• knowledge about the brutal treatment, torture, and demoralization of women and girls in Liberia, as well as in other conflict zones, past and present, across the globe;

• knowledge about what women and children (both girls and boys) are forced and coerced into doing to simply survive a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade, and beyond, in a country or region torn asunder by war.

To educate me about the backdrop for Eclipsed, my colleague, McCarter Literary Intern, and frequent McCarter blogger, Patrick McKelvey (in his capacity as assistant to Literary Manager and Eclipsed Dramaturg, Carrie Hughes), provided me with a stack of books on women, war, and sexual and gendered violence, including editor Anne Llewellyn Barstow’s War’s Dirty Secret:  Rape Prostitution, and Other Crimes Against Women and editors Meredith Turshen’s and Clotilde Twagiramariya’s What Women Do in Wartime:  Gender and Conflict in Africa.  Although neither of these books focus specifically on the plight of Liberian women, they present eye-opening research and scholarship on the nature and scope of the victimization of woman in armed conflict situations from World War II to the present day; on the crimes perpetrated upon women from Korea, China, Yugoslovia, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Chad, Mozambique, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti, etc.; and on atrocities committed by Japanese, Rwandans, Kenyans, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, Haitians, Yugoslavians, Serbians, Bosnians, Croats, as well as citizens of the United States, etc.

Barstow begins the introduction of her book with the sentence, “The purpose of this book is to change the way you think about war” (1). This simple quotation reminds me very much of the effect of Danai Gurira’s Eclipsed on me; although Gurira may not have had this as her conscious intention when writing, this play will change the way you think about war.

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Danai Gurira in In the Continuum, photo by Craig Schwartz

Playwright Danai Gurira has been developing her newest play, Eclipsed at McCarter. She and Nikkole Salter read excerpts from the play in our first “IN-Festival,” and the play received its first reading at McCarter in last year’s IN-Festival.  This year, the play is the Spotlight Production for the IN-Festival, running from January 29-February 8.  For ticket information, click here.  In researching the play, which explores the effects of war on Liberian women, Danai traveled to Liberia through a TCG New Generations grant, which she applied for with McCarter Theatre. She came back with a journal of her experiences which we shared on the blog last year.  I thought it worth re-posting today, on the first day of rehearsals for the Spotlight Production of Eclipsed.

I arrived with a vague confidence that things were in place to accomplish my goals; transport was organized, contacts were aware of my arrival, accommodations were relatively in place. Mohammed who would be my trusty driver for my entire stay picked me up from the airport. The US embassy Public Affairs officer Meg had connected me to his boss. The US embassy officer in the same position in Pretoria South Africa who had brought us to perform In the Continuum there earlier that year connected me to her. I marvel at how constructively my web of connections in Liberia was weaved. I was connected and ready to go.

The city was frightful to the eye. I realized this was where Hollywood and popular media filmed their “Africa” footage, where things could not be more destroyed and dismal, services could not be more lacking, buildings could not be more decrepit, and people could not be poorer. The streets marveled me, they were so riddled with potholes navigating them completely disallowed one the ability to speed. I thought of my own country, Zimbabwe, and realized how advanced it was for an African nation, and lamented at how bad leadership could lead to what I saw before me. We are crumbling at the seams, and though it would take a great deal to get us to this point, we are descending dangerously. But Monrovia showed all the signs of a land recovering from the ravages of war. It was later described to me by Americans working on the ground as a shantytown and a refugee camp. It was designed for only one hundred thousand residents and now was the home to over a million. Much of this influx was due to war displacement and the process of urbanization, which has taken its course across the continent.

My work began with phone calls, once settled in the Cape Hotel, recommended by Meg as safe and sufficient, and very close to the US embassy (for whatever that was worth). My first meeting was set up with Juli, a Liberian woman of steel in my present estimation, she became my most important contact, she was connected to me once again by Meg, described as one of those phenomenal Liberian women who just make it happen despite it all. The description was an underrating; this woman was a true tour de force. She had fought for peace in the midst of a vicious war, risking her life on several occasions, returning to a war zone when the US government evacuated her (she has American born children) and negotiating with armed rebel fighters to disarm by promising to send them back to school. She presently heads her own non-profit: Crusaders for Peace, which functions in a multidimensional way to bring about needed development in the country. We met at the Royal Hotel and had a meal; she listened to my spiel, more specifics on who I was and what my hopes and goals were. She was blunt, telling me, ‘you sound white do you know that? I was sure I was coming to meet a white girl. When you approached me I thought you were just someone who knew me from somewhere else.” I made a quick mental note to self to blacken up my English tone, whatever that meant exactly I would figure out later. She was glad to hear what my mission was, but had one final concern, “How old are you?” I assured her I was older than I looked and when I stated I was on the verge of thirty her face relaxed with relief. From that moment on, we became colleagues. She was very keen to maximize my dramatic arts expertise, she utilized much theater for development in her various developmental campaigns and was horrified with the performances and created works of her dramatic team. “They need help. I can’t stand to look at the stuff they come up with.” She said she would bring in other aspiring artists and I could conduct a weeklong workshop. She then offered to set up interviews with women who survived the war, both in and outside of the capital. I later learned that Juli was also the Liberian Cultural Ambassador; meaning she represented Liberia globally on any cultural activity. She had just returned from South Africa where she attended Lucky Dube’s funeral (the African Bob Marley, gunned down in Johannesburg recently). She shared her struggle to gain financial backing to create a home for children, complete with a school and a community of a church, stores and other facilities. She invited me to come to her census workshop the next morning. I readily accepted. Her organization had won the government bid to spear head communications and education on the national census - happening in 2008, the first one since 1984 - before the country went into twenty years of on again, off again wars.

Things were off to a good start, Juli was going to organize interviews, I was going to conduct workshops and I would work with other contacts to find more potential interviews.

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