There are no men in Eclipsed. You can’t see them, anyway. You can feel them. The five women onstage can feel them, too.
You’ve probably heard this about the show, which is nominated for six Tony awards, including Best Play. It is the first of its kind: The first Broadway play with an all-black, all-female cast; the first play on Broadway with an all-female cast, period. It was written by a woman, Danai Gurira, and is directed by a woman, Liesl Tommy.
Eclipsed takes place in the early 2000s, in the midst of the Liberian civil war, and follows the lives of four “wives,” which is to say, sex slaves, of an officer referred to only as the C.O. Though their rapes occur somewhere in the wings — somewhere in the audience’s imagination — the before and the after, the way they absorb trauma and are both shaped by it but not completely defined by it, fills the stage. Eclipsed is violent and intense, but also, thanks to the timely discovery of a copy of Bill Clinton’s My Life, unexpectedly funny. (Suffice it to say the women, who jockey for prime position with the C.O. as a means of survival, find plenty to relate to in Clinton’s marital narrative.)
The play takes the experiences of women in wartime and treats them as inherently worthy, complicated, and vital. And the women in Eclipsed, as cast member and Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o wrote in Lenny last month, are never treated as “tropes. They are battling real demons, living with difficult decisions in an all-too-real world stricken with the trauma of war.”
Tommy grew up in South Africa under apartheid; she came to the United States with her family when she was a teenager. She is nominated for a Tony for her direction of Eclipsed. And although she is enjoying a particularly busy stretch — the lead-up to the Tony Awards, plus mounting a production of Eclipsed in San Francisco, oh, and she’s directing the live show of Frozen at Disneyland for the Hyperion, the Mouse’s 2,000-seat theater — Tommy took some time to speak with ThinkProgress by phone. Read on for her thoughts about finding a home on Broadway for a play about rape survivors, bringing colorblind casting to Frozen, and working in theater as a woman of color.
To go back to the very beginning for a minute, you first read this play six years ago?
That’s about how long it’s been. Danai wanted to do a workshop of it, so it was in a very early state. Honestly, after reading five pages of it, I knew that it was really special and that I was going to work on it. Sometimes you just get that. I always say, in this world, you, as an artist, you have to go with your gut. And I knew right away.
How similar are those first five pages to the first five minutes of the play that’s on Broadway now?
Actually, very similar! When I started working on the play, that scene was incredibly distilled. Even in the early version, what we initially workshopped were story arc, character arc, a lot of Act 2 got moved around, scenes got taken away. But her initial impulse was so strong and so clear.
So this idea that the male C.O., and really all male presence, would be felt but not seen — that there would be no men on stage, ever — that was there from the get-go?
Yes! And that is what in those first five pages was so special! That’s what drew me to it. It’s so theatrical. It’s such a bold choice. I thought: This was a writer who really trusts her ideas. It was really innovative, I thought. The lack of the male presence in the first five pages drew me in.
How did you work out with the cast what your shared understanding and image of this C.O. would be, and what their characters would be experiencing off-stage?
We did a lot of research. I always do a ton of research for historical and political plays. And I made the actors do a lot of research. And they delved into the world on their own as well. But there were certainly enough images of who the C.O. could be in the documentaries we watched; we had a very specific idea of who this man was, what his tread on the earth was that they were hearing before they saw him. We actually had an extremely specific idea of who the C.O. was that helped us create the reality and the intensity of his presence.
How familiar were you with this period of Liberian history? What was something you discovered in the research that surprised you?
I was quite familiar. I’m a news junkie, particularly an African news junkie. Charles Taylor was someone I was quite familiar with. The peacewomen, represented in the play by Rita, it’s something Danai and I are frustrated by to no end: There are so many stories about misery of war in Africa, and women as victims of war in Africa, and here you have these incredible women — Nobel Peace Prize winners — who took on the corruption and violence, and through a very specific and dedicated effort, turned the war around. You would think every single human being who cares about war and politics would care about this story, but it was just completely under-reported. That, to me, was the revelation in the research.
As an audience member — and I didn’t realize this, I think, until after the play — this was the first time I’d ever seen a war story that placed women at the center, and treated those women as protagonists. And not for doing something transgressive, like dressing as a man to go into combat. But for doing and experiencing what average women in that time and place would be experiencing.
That to me is what is so brilliant. One of the things, because I’m from South Africa, I’m very leery of stories that I feel fetishize the African body. And I feel like what Danai has done, and what we strive to do in this production, is, as an audience member, you cannot turn these women into others, into exotic African creatures. Because of how it’s written, you cannot help but imagine yourself in that scenario. These women are so different from each other, and the choices they make are so different from each other, you can’t help but ask: What one would I be? What choices would I make? You cannot help but identify with their journeys. And that is really a gift in terms of being a storyteller.
It made me think, “Is this what it feels like to be a man at a play, or at the movies? You have so many options!”
Exactly! Because every kind of womanhood is represented on that stage. Every mother, child, sister, friend, in some way, is seen there.
Was there any scene or moment in particular that you’re proudest of, or was the most challenging to execute?
I think that the final scene, which is so incredibly emotionally intense, and Danai does this incredible thing where it’s just event after event after event happens, and each is more harrowing than the one before, and if someone were to describe that scene to me, I’d say, “That’s way too much.” But it unfolds and you’re riveted.
The note I gave a lot was, “you can’t cry here, you can’t cry here, you can’t cry here.” And they would give me these looks, “If you were onstage experiencing this, you would be sobbing!” And as a director, you have to craft it so it isn’t emoting from beginning to end so the audience wouldn’t become numb from too much crying. It was weeks and weeks and weeks of crying through that whole scene. It was to the point of, no one can cry until this point, and then it’s just silent tears, there can’t be sound, because it’s going to drown out the dialogue. So it became highly orchestrated sonically, so there were actual highs and lows and the levels were clear. Finally, it became freedom within the structure. So the emotional life was super dropped-in, but they were a little five-piece orchestra together, in terms of when they released the hounds and making sure they contained it. As a director, I think that’s the most important job, is to orchestrate the emotional journey so the audience is with them.
I think people are generally aware, or are becoming more aware, of gender discrimination in Hollywood and the stunning lack of female directors in film and television. Where does theater fall, in that space? Better than average? Worse?
Well, it’s a tough question because, for example, this year’s Tony awards, in both musical directing and play directing, there are 10 nominees, and I’m the only woman among all of those nominees. And that means that — that’s still shocking, isn’t it?
I don’t know if I’m shocked by that anymore, but it does make me think, are the Tonys relevant? Because clearly the Tonys don’t think my life experience and perspective are relevant.
Absolutely. When you’re nominated, they send you this beautiful book with all of the people nominated in your category, and I’m looking at all of these men and then there’s just me! So obviously, I have wonderful colleagues who are women who are working all the time, but I still feel like, in terms of making a long-term life in this business, when I look at who is directing on Broadway consistently, it is still only a handful of women. The majority are men. And that’s a huge problem, because for me, it’s about leadership. When you direct, you are in a position of power. You have a leadership position. And apparently, that is still a problem in terms of people in power creating space for us.
Do you ever feel the need to modify your behavior as a director because you’re a woman? Are there things you want to say or ways you want to act that male directors get away with, but you don’t think you can?
You know, in the past, absolutely, 100 percent, I did feel that. I used to feel really strongly about being super-controlled, never losing my temper in tech, which is a very high-stress situation. And you hear these stories about well-known male directors who lose their shit, and they would release the tension that way. I started off as a young, unknown, woman of color, and I felt like I had to be perfect, and I had to be the epitome of grace under pressure, so no one could ever use that as an excuse to not hire me.
I definitely felt like I had to work harder. At my most tired, I had to be put together, in terms of how I looked, so people wouldn’t think I was cracking under the pressure. And I knew that I had peers who would show up barely showered, in Converse sneakers, unbrushed hair, and it was cool. But if I showed up barely showered and with unbrushed hair, I’m fairly certain no one would be thinking it’s cool. So I definitely felt that pressure.
But I will say in the last year and a half, I have allowed myself to be a little bit more real in terms of how I’m feeling, in tech particularly, because I’ve realized that internalizing all of that stress was not good for me. So I do raise my voice now when I feel like people aren’t pulling their weight, and I am much more confident in terms of expressing frustration. I think that’s really healthy and really important.
What was it like to try to get producers to sign on to this show in New York? Was there hesitation or just outright rejection over all these things we’re talking about: It’s an all-black, all-female cast, and it takes place in Africa, and everyone has accents, and it’s a play about women who are rape survivors — who are being raped throughout the play. Do you pitch it like, “There’s so much humor, too! Lots of funny moments”?
We went through all of it. We did this play in D.C., we did this play at Yale, and it was incredibly well-received. Awards, great reviews, all of those things. For the life of us, we could not get it to New York. And you read this play and it is so clear why it is special and why it should be seen. But I really do feel like, for producers, it takes place in Africa, and “we just did Ruined, so that’s enough. What more do they want?” And it’s all women, and I think that’s still a really tough sell for some reason. And here’s another thing I think is not always explored: It comes from a very feminine perspective. Now, people are interested in women things if it unconsciously feels male.
What do you mean by that?
So for example, we all love Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. But Uma Thurman is taking on the male. She basically is inhabiting male storytelling in a female body. And this example plays out over and over and over again. And I think that there may have been an unconscious tension for people around the fact that men were just made invisible in this play and people are not used to that.
It’s interesting to be talking to you today, as news keeps breaking about Brock Turner and the Stanford rape case, and the extraordinary number of people reading the letter from the victim. It makes me think about Eclipsed, too, because it’s this woman who has a right to anonymity and is exercising it, but she found a way to control the narrative — to tell her story from her perspective. And Eclipsed has these women who are experiencing sexual assault be completely in control of how their story is told and seen.
It almost hurts to talk about this story because it’s just such an outrage. It’s also ironic because, when I do talkbacks for Eclipsed or interviews, I always have to gently remind people that this is not something that is unique to Africa or unique to war-torn societies. That women are living with this reality anywhere and everywhere in the world. And it’s not enough that the crime is committed but the societal structure is such that they are best left silenced, whether that’s a conservative Muslim girl in West Africa or college girl in the United States. The power structure wants them to be silent.
Eclipsed is a political play, I think, but do you believe all plays are inherently political? What does the idea of a “political play” mean to you?
I’ve been doing political theater pretty much from the very beginning. That’s the only thing I’ve done. And if the play is not political, like Frozen, somehow it becomes political in my hands! And I did something with Frozen that hasn’t been done in the world of Disney before, which is, I asked that we cast everyone — the princesses, the princes, kings, queens, everybody — multiculturally. And Disney has a very strict policy in the parks that you recreate for the visitors what they see in the films, which means, stick to the race, please. And there was definitely a moment when I was immersed in this struggle when I thought, Liesl, just direct the damn play! Don’t turn everything into this fight. But when I walked around that park and I saw all these little girls of every race in an Elsa costume, I understood then why the universe gave me that job. My job was not just theater but, again, advocacy.
I am floored that Disney would be open to that, honestly. They are so protective of their creative properties, and Frozen is such big business for them.
It was a long process. One of the things I’ve got to give Disney a lot of credit for is, it was a very considered process. No one said, “Absolutely not, that’s not what we do here.” There was a lot of conversation and debate. And there were certainly people who were afraid of change, no question, and then there were people who were really excited by it. And it was clear the decision had to come from the very top, and Bob Iger, once the question was presented to him, he was very clear: Absolutely. It’s time. We have to do this.
But the thing I wonder is, and this is why it’s so important to put women and people of color in positions of leadership, I wonder if it hadn’t been a person who looked like me directing it, if that level of demand would have happened.
What’s the reaction been like?
The response has been mixed. There are people all over social media just in tears. We have Asian and Latina actresses, African American, white, all playing princesses, and the fan art is crazy. Because there’s something for everyone. That is just so incredibly moving to me. And the messages I get from people I do not know saying, “I never ever thought I’d be able to bring my little girl to a show and let her see a Disney princess that looks like her,” you want to start crying and never stop.
It raises this interesting question about Disney movies, and if what is in the animated films is canon, or if they’re really just fairy tales, in which case, they exist to be reimagined.
Exactly! And what’s interesting is, in this dialogue, in this debate, I’ve spent my entire career talking about colorblind casting or when I’ve done what people consider colorblind casting, and it was super intentional on my part to make that character Asian and that character black, I’ve been doing it for a very long time. But the question I think people don’t think about, the question I always ask, is: Is this play about whiteness? Because if it’s about whiteness, then we shouldn’t colorblind cast it. If I were working on Long Day’s Journey into Night, I wouldn’t be interested in the black version. Because I believe dramaturgically, that play is about whiteness, a certain kind of white person. I feel the same way about August Wilson. Those plays are about blackness, and the lives of black people. And I just didn’t feel like Frozen was ultimately about whiteness.
That caused a great big stir. The actor who played Jean Valjean is Indian, and I just felt like, the appearance of someone who looked Middle Eastern in that role was really powerful, in the moment we were living in then. And once I was able to do that I realized: Oh, I’m going to open up this entire conversation. I thought about each role and, for example, Fantine, I cast an African American woman. I felt like, this is a single mother, struggling to make a life for her child. That is not about whiteness, that could be about anything. And it took on a life of its own, especially once I started seeing the talent that was coming in.
That’s something I think about a lot when casting is so ethnically limited: There’s so much talent being left on the table.
The casting process is, in and of itself, really powerful. I sometimes wish someone would make a documentary about what that is about. Because these actors didn’t believe, when they read the casting notices, that the producers were serious about multicultural casting. Because many times, they’ve shown up and that line in the casting notice — “All ethnicities encouraged” — is usually just a platitude. And they go and see the cast and it’s just white people. So they didn’t bother coming in because they didn’t believe it.
So what I always do, to prove that I believe it, is word the casting notices in such a specific way that people, when you talk to agents, say, “I’m only looking for people of color.” And then they start to believe you might really mean it. And one of the things about Les Mis and Frozen, people of color would come in and sing these iconic songs, and they’d get really emotional. At the end of the audition, they would say, “Thank you so much, it was so awesome to be able to sing this song in front of even a small audience because I never thought I’d be able to sing that song.”
Eclipsed is a play of a lot of firsts: first all-black, all-female cast and creative team on Broadway. Were you thinking about that and whatever significance that has at any part of this process?
It never occurred to us. You’re just doing the work, honestly. That’s all that’s happening. You’re not thinking about making history in any way. You’re not thinking about being the first. Who really thinks that’s a thing that could be a first? In this day and age? “you’re the first African woman to be nominated for the Tony for best director of a play?” No, you never think about that shit.
You moved from South Africa to the U.S. when you were a teenager, right? What was that like?
I moved to the U.S. when I was a teenager. It was a pretty brutal adjustment. I came from a very political family in the depths of apartheid and apartheid activism, and then I came to a country where pretty much no one in my high school had even heard of apartheid or knew where South Africa was. And that was devastating. It was really painful, because people were dying and sacrificing their lives and demonstrating every day. I came from a society that was clear that I was a second class citizen, and coming here — that was totally traumatic. My peers in general were completely ignorant. But I did a play, and I started to find my community, and it was really theater that helped me find myself within this context.
What does the audience for Eclipsed look like? Who is coming to see the show?
This is going to make me emotional, talking about it. it’s such a beautiful audience. It is so diverse: across race, across age, across class. It’s really profound when you look into that audience. Danai and i have been talking about this. We’ve seen a lot of Broadway recently, and usually you are one of two or three people of color in the audience. And in our audience, it’s way, way more diverse. It’s really satisfying. Because that’s really all we wanted for this show: to reach as many people as possible. And I can tell by the kinds of people who wait out in the street afterwards that all of them, no matter who they are, are equally touched, and that’s just really beautiful.