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Lupita Nyongo is starring in Eclipsed at Broadways Golden Theater

Posted by : USA Online on May 03,2016 04:40 PM
Academy Award-winning actress Lupita N’yongo will be starring on Broadway in Eclipsed, the raw and moving story about female oppression in Liberia. N’yongo and her colleagues are making history in the first Broadway production to have a cast and creative team made up entirely of black women. 

The production, which will premier on March 6 at the Golden Theater, is a change of pace for the Kenyan actress, who was recently featured in the newest Star Wars film. Her connections to the play run deep, however. She first became familiar with the harrowing tale in 2009, when she was cast in Eclipsed as an understudy at the Yale Repertory Theater. Since her involvement seven years ago, N’yongo has been searching for opportunities to reprise her role in the moving drama. 

N’yongo starred in the recent Off-Broadway run of Eclipsed, which was performed at the Public Theater. The actress got the unique opportunity to choose which show the playhouse would feature when she was approached by its creative director, Oskar Eustis, who wanted to collaborate with her. N’yongo knew she wanted to return to Eclipsed.

“I had sat down with myself after the whirlwind year I’d had and thought about what I really wanted to do, and it was just Eclipsed. So when Oskar offered me some plays to read and asked whether I’d be interested in doing any of them, I just said, ‘Nope, I want to do Eclipsed,’” N’yongo told The New York Times. 

After winning an Academy Award for her role in the critically acclaimed film 12 Years a Slave and earning a spot in the hit Star Wars: The Force Awakens, N’yongo felt a distinct urge to return to the stage. 

“I did a lot of expressing of myself during the campaign for 12 Years [A Slave]” and I needed to get back to who I was as a performer, as an actor, as a beginner. The thing about winning a prestigious award is that in a sense you’re being told that you’re an expert. But when you play a role, you’re always a beginner. And I love the communal experience of theater, of getting to really go deep and to play with other people and create together,” she explained to the Times. 

Aside from her collegiate connections to the piece, N’yongo wanted to bring Eclipsed to Broadway as a way to diversify mainstream media. A recent supporter of the #OscarsSoWhite movement, which pointed out the lack of minorities in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, N’yongo hopes her portrayal of a Liberian captive woman will spark a conversation about diversity and representation. 

"I am very happy to be in this particular moment with that play because, you know, it's about walking the talk and I think this conversation that is being had at this moment, it's, the Academy Awards is a catalyst but it's not where the issue lies. I think what this conversation is unearthing is that there's a hunger and a desire for the world of film, theater and TV to reflect the world we live in, which is diverse,' she explained to E! News. 

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