'Thousands of people have sat in a room and been made to experience an African women's story. That's the coolest thing--that's what I wanted.' |
When Danai Gurira '01 was in the third grade, she had a teacher who--like many in Zimbabwe--was known for inflicting corporal punishment on her students. One day, Danai marched up to the teacher and told her that in America, teachers would get in trouble for doing such a thing. "I don't even know how I knew that," she laughs. The teacher let Danai say her piece, stared at her for a moment, then told her: "You talk too much."
It's the kind of thing Danai got used to hearing as a kid, having been what she describes as a "loudmouth girl" in a culture where women were expected to be quiet. That kind of defiance is one of the central ways in which Danai relates to Abigail, the character she wrote for herself in her play, In the Continuum. Abigail is an amalgam, Danai says, of several women that she knew growing up in Zimbabwe, but there are some elements of herself in the character. In one scene in the play, Abigail remembers having won a public speaking competition as a girl, and Gurira emphasizes the significance of what might seem to American audiences a small feat. "That she had the guts to stand up and deliver a speech like that is something I feel connected to as an act of rebellion for an African girl. There is a huge wave of opposition toward that kind of outspokenness."
Gurira adds that Abigail's bravery is more impressive than her own because Abigail did not have the benefit of growing up in a household where she was encouraged to speak her mind.
Also unlike Abigail, Gurira was born in, of all places, Iowa. Her parents grew up in Zimbabwe, where they met during high school. Both attended college in the Midwest and her father later taught chemistry at Grinnell. When Danai was 5, the family moved back to Zimbabwe. She went to elementary and high school there, and despite just a few visits to the States, she identified in some fundamental way as American. "Until I came back, when I realized that Zim is my home." She quickly qualifies this sudden declaration: "America has the functional opportunities for me to advance in life, and there's a lot about me that has been influenced by this culture," explains Gurira, whose sister, Chiwoniso Gurira '96, preceded her to Macalester. "My parents lived here 20 years and they were influenced by this culture. Even the way I was raised in Zimbabwe was not typical. To have a loudmouth daughter is unusual in a Zimbabwan home and my parents had loudmouth daughters! If they'd never spent time here, I don't know if I would have come out this way or if I'd have had the nerve to write this play."
"This play" is the reason that we are talking today, and it represents the kind of accomplishment that most actors and playwrights don't see in a lifetime.
Two years after its initial performance in the Bronx, Danai and her co-author have performed the play everywhere from Harare, Zimbabwe, to Washington, D.C., consistently to enormous critical acclaim. The New York Times called In the Continuum "moving, smart, spirited and powerfully funny" and said the play "pulses with life from start to finish." The two authors-performers are "fiercely talented young women [who] won't be spending much downtime in the near future, if their ambition meets with the success it deserves," the Times said.
 Gurira co-wrote the work in graduate school at New York University with a classmate, Nikkole Salter. In the Continuum is essentially two one-woman shows, intertwined: both Gurira and Salter, who is African-American and grew up in Los Angeles, portray multiple characters in telling the story of an African woman and an African-American woman, respectively, who discover that the men in their lives have infected them with the AIDS virus. Both women are strong-willed but vulnerable, funny without always meaning to be, and the play's success is largely the result of their essential and wonderful humanity.
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Top: Gurira as Mammy Weaver in Langston Hughes' Limitations of Life, directed by Professor Beth Cleary at Macalester in 1998. Above: Nikkole Salter, left, and Gurira with director Robert O'Hara.
RICHARD TERMINE |
The story that the play tells is in many ways tragic. Aside from being infected themselves, both women find themselves pregnant and unable to speak openly about their infection to their men. But despite the sadness of the story, In the Continuum is remarkably uplifting: even without a "positive" outcome, audiences inevitably go away with huge smiles on their faces. It's not just the performances of the two women, which are astonishing--brimming with energy and excitement--but also, as Gurira recognizes, the simple level of humanity that both characters achieve. She counts Chekhov among her influences and was inspired by his ability to tap into the "absurdity of life. [Chekhov] is so great at that--reading something like The Cherry Orchard, which ends sadly, but at the end you've laughed!"
Gurira insists that the accolades the play has received are merely the icing. The cake is what she calls the "miracle" of the play's creation. "The biggest leap for us was just to create it." She is thrilled with the play's success, of course, but what matters most to her is the access that the critical response has allowed. "Thousands of people have sat in a room and been made to experience an African women's story. That's the coolest thing--that's what I wanted."
Danai was interested in drama in high school and excited about the idea of studying performance academically at Macalester. But she says that while Macalester crystallized her passion for theater, the college also helped awaken what she calls her "other love"--for social justice. Fascinated by social psychology and knowing she would pursue an M.F.A. in drama after graduation, she declared a psychology major and satiated her acting bug by "dabbling" in the Theater Department, encouraged by Professor Beth Cleary. "Danai was so powerful and talented as a 17-year-old and only got better while she was here. That kind of blazing talent is rare, a great gift," Cleary says. Danai waxes fondly about the Psychology Department, recalling the department coordinator Mary Claire Shultz as her "surrogate mom," the dedicated academic support of Professor Kendrick Brown and the "most enjoyable hours" she spent with friends and faculty in the department.
'I stepped into the dramatic arts searching for literature that represented what I knew. I couldn't find it, so I had to create it for myself.' |
Gurira says that her experience at Mac was instrumental in convincing her to pursue a career in theater. The college fostered the fusion of her artistic and political passions. During her study abroad experience in South Africa, her desire to pursue theater became a need. "I met these amazing artists who performed their art during apartheid to make a difference and that's when it hit me to the core that I needed to fly without a net, and go into this very insecure field! I knew that's where my passion lay. I realized that this is my medium."
It was during her time at Macalester that Gurira began to tell the stories of African women. They didn't always center around HIV, but as she explains, the prevalence of the disease in Africa makes it statistically impossible to grow up there and not be affected by it. When it came time to create her own work as the final aspect of her M.F.A. program, Salter approached her with the assumption that she would do a piece on an African woman and AIDS. Salter wanted to tackle the subject of African-American women and AIDS, and suggested they might work together. Danai wasn't sure of heading in that direction at the time, but she took her up on it. Neither expected that they would merge their two stories--they thought they'd stage their pieces back to back. Danai sought counsel from an NYU professor, who asked: "Why don't you put them on stage at the same time?"
The paths of Abigail and Nia--Salter's character, whose story is based in Los Angeles--are not matching and the characters never interact directly. But there are parallels, and the pairing of the stories renders the play more than the sum of two parts. Gurira has come to see the play as not only a celebration of the black experience, or the African struggle, but of the female experience. She talks about "older, middle-class white women" who said they were able to identify with the expression of womanhood in the play. She talks about the political aims of the play as twofold: on one level, the desire to deal with issues that are not discussed openly for both black and African women--to "bring that stuff out from under the table." But there is also the desire to bring that story to a Western audience. "The way that Africans and African-Americans are portrayed in the media can allow audiences to feel there is an us and a them," she says. "That's why this play requires our all because we have to live as much as we can in our humanity so that is translated regardless of their color: so that distance is lessened, so we realize that these people are the same, we're the same flesh and blood!"
Just watching Danai perform the play--all six roles--is itself exhausting. After seeing it, the only thing I can stammer out when I catch her afterwards is: "How do you do that every night?!" She laughs at the question, but recognizes its legitimacy. "The thing about this play is that you can't not give it your all," she says. "It demands everything you have: every thought, every emotion, every ability to focus, every ability to imagine, everything. So it is draining. Sometimes literally your solar plexus feels tired."
But Danai's solar plexus is doing just fine these days. When I meet her for an interview later in New York, she walks the sidewalk of Union Square with the poise and stride of a fashion model relishing her final length on some Parisian catwalk. She is about to begin shooting her first film, in which she plays an immigrant from Senegal who sells jewelry on the streets of New York, and as we walk she points out earring-laden women that she attempted to observe during her research. She is thrilled about the role. "It's telling another African woman's story that I wouldn't have even thought of."
It's also the first time that she is not appearing in the role(s) of Abigail. In the Continuum is being performed in Cincinnati as part of its U.S. tour, with another actress playing the part. I ask her how that feels, and she is positively flush with pride. "I stepped into the dramatic arts searching for literature that represented what I knew," she says. "I couldn't find it, so I had to create it for myself. And I hoped there would be something for the next African girl that wants to portray her society. To see a black girl step into that role is, again, the cake." |
