'Eclipsed' Brings Story Of Liberian Civil War To Stage : NPR: Playwright Danai Gurira says the inspiration for her new play, Eclipsed, came from a photograph one of her professors showed her when she was in graduate school. The picture, which ran alongside a New York Times article about women in Africa, showed a female fighting unit.
'I didn't know anything about women fighters in African wars,' Gurira tells Jennifer Ludden. 'And just to see these women standing there, you know, in their jeans and ... fashionable tops and their hair is all done, and they're all carrying AK-47s, was just an image I couldn't get out of my head.'
Gurira, who was born in the U.S. but raised in Zimbabwe, knew that one day she'd try to get behind the eyes of the fighting women, to tell their story. So in 2007, she journeyed to Liberia to learn more. On her trip, she met women fighters — as well as women who promoted peace.
