While most people recognize Danai Gurira from her performance as Michonne on AMC’s hit drama The Walking Dead, Gurira is also known as a famous playwright.
Before becoming a part of many Sunday night routines, Gurira won an OBIE Award, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and an Outer Critics Circle Award, and has written such plays as Eclipsed, The Convert, and co-wrote In the Continuum with Nikkole Salter. She won the Helen Hayes Award for Best Lead Actress for In the Continuum, which was also nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
Now Gurira’s play, Familiar, will be part of the Yale Repertory Theater’s 2014-15 season. The play will be directed by Rebecca Taichman and will run from January 30 – February 21, 2015.
Yale Rep even took to their Twitter to link the announcement of Gurira’s play, as well as four other plays. Gurira’s Familiar, as well as Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ War and Sheila Callaghan’s Elevada will all be world premieres. New productions of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia and Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle will also be featured in the 2014-15 season.
@nytimestheater on Yale Rep 14-15: 2 modern masterpieces; 3 world premiere commissions; 4 female directors http://t.co/VzkVlMkfum
— Yale Rep (@yalerep) March 17, 2014
Familiar is described as follows: “In a snowy Midwestern suburb, Marvelous and Donald are preparing for the marriage of their eldest daughter. Clashes erupt within the family when the first-generation American bride-to-be insists on observing a traditional Zimbabwean wedding ritual. Familiar is a richly funny and deeply moving new play about the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters, sisters, wives and husbands—the customs they keep, and the secrets they keep buried.”
Gurira is even getting help from friends on getting the word out about her new play.
Ooh. My friend Danai (you know as Michonne on WALKING DEAD) is an awesome playwright and has a new one at @yalerep http://t.co/Hvk1Dq4hBy
— Alissa Wilkinson (@alissamarie) March 17, 2014
Like Familiar, War, The Caucasian Chalk Circle and Elevada will be directed by women.
Image via YouTube.