Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company Opens Its 30th Season With ECLIPSED 9/6

Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company opens Season 30, the 2009-10 Season, with the World Premiere of Eclipsed by Danai Gurira, award-winning co-creator and performer of the Off-Broadway hit In the Continuum. Directed by Liesl Tommy, the cast features Woolly Mammoth Company Members Jessica Frances Dukes and Dawn Ursula, with Uzo Aduba, Ayesha Ngaujah, and Liz Femi Wilson.

Eclipsed runs August 31 - September 27, 2009, with Pay-What-You-Can performances on August 31 and September 1 at 8pm. (Note: these performances dates are changed since our original season announcement. No extension possible).

The production opens tonight, September 6th.

Woolly Mammoth is located at 641 D Street, NW (7th & D).

“Danai Gurira demonstrated her remarkable talent as both an actor and playwright with In The Continuum, her award-winning hit (created with Nikkole Salter) that came to Woolly Mammoth in 2006,” said Artistic Director Howard Shalwitz.  With Eclipsed, Danai steps onto a bigger canvas, painting a vivid portrait of five young Liberian women whose lives are enmeshed in civil war.  Woolly is proud to launch this sharp-edged, surprisingly humorous, and emotionally powerful new play – which makes a universal statement about the impact of war and the resilience of individuals who forge a vision of the future in the face of the cruelest circumstances.  Eclipsed will launch Woolly’s 30th season of plays about big topics and pressing conversations about the world we live in.”  

The captive wives (Uzo Aduba, Liz Femi Wilson) of a Liberian rebel officer form a hardscrabble sisterhood, their lives set on a nightmarish detour by civil war.  With the arrival of a new girl who can read (Ayesha Ngaujah), the return of a wife who has become a soldier (Jessica Frances Dukes), and the appearance of an aide worker (Dawn Ursula) – their possibilities are quickly transformed.  Drawing on reserves of wit and compassion, these defiant survivors ask: when the fog of battle lifts, could a different destiny emerge?

Danai Gurira co-created and performed in the award-winning two-woman play In the Continuum, which premiered off-Broadway and toured the U.S. and Southern Africa.  For her work on that production, Danai won a 2006 Obie Award, the 2006 Outer Critics John Gassner Award, and the 2004 Global Tolerance' Award (Friends of the United Nations), in addition to being honored by the Theatre Hall of Fame.  In 2007, she received a Helen Hayes Award for Best Lead Actress in In the Continuum at Woolly Mammoth.  Danai was most recently seen on Broadway in Lincoln Center Theater's production of Joe Turner's Come and Gone.  She is the recipient of '08 TCG New Generations travel grant for Eclipsed and has taught playwriting and acting in Uberia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.  She received her MFA in acting from NYU.  Danai was born in the U.S. to Zimbabwean parents and raised in Zimbabwe.

Liesl Tommy is a native of Cape Town, South Africa, currently living in NYC.  She began her career as an actress, training in the UK and the States, and then shifted into directing upon moving to New York.  Since then she has developed new work with such writers as Tracey Scott Wilson, Eisa Davis, Quiara Hudes, Lynn Nottage, Koffi Kwahule, Jason Grote, and many others.  Recent projects include Forged in Fire by Sam Okello and The Africa Trilogy Project, an international project which has taken her to Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya and which will premiere in 2010 at the Luminato Festival in Toronto.  In 2009, she directed the world premieres of The Good Negro by Tracey Scott Wilson and Angela’s Mixtape by Eisa Davis, both in New York, as well as two productions at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, WV (Davis’ The History of Light and Steven Dietz’ Yankee Tavern).  She will direct another production of Eclipsed at Yale Rep in October 2009.  Liesl has also taught directing at Trinity Rep/Brown University’s Graduate Directing Program, acting at NYU-Tisch School of the Arts, and been a guest artist at the Juilliard School.  She is passionate about teaching and mentors young directors of color.  Liesl hopes to help encourage the next generation of directors to stake their claim on this art form she so loves.

Woolly Mammoth Company Members Jessica Frances Dukes and Dawn Ursula with Uzo Aduba, Ayesha Ngaujah, and Liz Femi Wilson, all making their debuts with Woolly Mammoth.

Jessica Frances Dukes (Maima) is one of Woolly Mammoth’s newest Company Members.  She was recently seen in Woolly’s world premieres of Fever/Dream and Antebellum, and also appeared in Starving.  She has performed with Theater Alliance (Insurrection: Holding History), The Kennedy Center (Unleashed: The Secret Lives of White House Pets), as well as other companies locally and regionally.  Dawn Ursula (Rita) returns to Woolly where she is a Company Member.  She performed in Woolly’s The Unmentionables, Starving, and The Velvet Sky.  Other local appearances include numerous productions with Everyman Theatre, Flyin’ West with True Colors, and roles with Rep Stage, African Continuum Theatre Company, The Kennedy Center, Young Playwright’s Theatre and Imagination Stage. She is a graduate of The Shakespeare Theater Company’s Academy for Classical Acting.  Uzo Aduba (Helena) was recently seen on Broadway in Coram Boy, at Crossroads Theatre Company in Sheila’s Day, and played the title role of Dessa Rose for New Rep. She is also a Helen Hayes Award nominee for Translations of Xhosa at Olney Theatre Center.  Ayesha Ngaujah (Girl) was most recently part of New George's Angela's Mixtape at the Ohio Theater (NYC). Last year, she played in the Atlanta premiere of the production with Synchronicity Performance Group. Her other recent credits include productions with Bone Orchard Theatre, True Colors Theatre Company, Alliance Theater, PushPush Theater, and St. Louis Black Repertory Company, and internationally in productions in the Netherlands.  Liz Femi Wilson (Bessie) was most recently seen playing all 17 characters in Nilaja Sun's No Child at the Weston Playhouse.  She has performed in Cardenio and Island of Anyplace (American Repertory Theatre), Trigger and Phoenician Women (A.R.T. Institute), and Hamlet and Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom (Todd Theater).  She has an MFA from the A.R.T./MXAT Institute of Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University.

The production & design team for Eclipsed includes Daniel Ettinger (Set Design), Kathleen Geldard (Costume Design), Colin K. Bills (Lighting Design), Veronika Vorel (Sound Design), Jennifer Sheetz (Properties), Tonya Beckman Ross (Dialect Coach), and John Gurski (Fight Choreographer).

Now in its 30th Season, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company continues to hold its place at theatre’s leading edge. Acknowledged as “The hottest theatre company in town” (Washington Post), “known for its productions of innovative new plays” (The New York Times), Woolly Mammoth is a regional and national leader in the development of new plays, and one of the best known and most influentiAl Small theatres in America.  The Company garnered this reputation by holding fast to its unique mission: 

…to ignite an explosive engagement between theatre artists and the community by developing, producing and promoting new plays that explore The Edges of theatrical style and human experience, and by implementing new ways to use the artistry of theatre to serve the people of Greater Washington, DC.  

Currently under the leadership of Artistic Director/Co-Founder Howard Shalwitz and Managing Director Jeffrey Herrmann, Woolly Mammoth is a member of the National New Play Network, Theatre Communications Group, The League of Washington Theatres, and The Cultural Alliance of Greater Washington, and a participant in the A-ha! Program: Think it, Do it, funded by MetLife and administered by Theatre Communications Group, the national organization for the American theatre.  The Theatre’s programs are supported in part by The National Endowment for the Arts, the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the National Capital Arts and Cultural Affairs Program/United States Commission of Fine Arts, and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Photo credit: Stan Barouh

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