Eclipsed Celebrates Release of Boko Haram Hostage | Playbill

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News Eclipsed Celebrates Release of Boko Haram Hostage The Broadway drama is campaigning to win the release of 200 girls being held by extremists in Africa.
The company of Eclipsed Joseph Marzullo/WENN

The cast of the Broadway drama Eclipsed celebrated a rare victory May 18.

The drama's author (and star of TV's The Walking Dead), Danai Gurira, appeared onstage for a special curtain call at this week's matinee to dedicate the performance to Amina Ali, the Nigerian schoolgirl who escaped from the Boko Haram May 17 after 764 days in captivity.

As previously announced, Eclipsed has been dedicating each performance to the abducted and still missing 219 schoolgirls of Chibok, northern Nigeria. At each curtain call, the performance is dedicated—by name—to two of the girls abducted from the Chibok School by the Boko Haram in April 2014, an international tragedy that has spawned the #BringBackOurGirls campaign.


Video is courtesy of Eclipsed on Broadway.

Eclipsed, which is set during the Liberian Civil War of the 1990s-2000s, has been using its high profile to focus public attention on the still-ongoing hostage tragedy.

Each performance of Eclipsed is being dedicated ”to the abducted and still missing girls in Africa, here in the U.S. and all around the world. During the curtain call, a live announcement will be made dedicating by name each performance to a specific missing girl, an effort to shine a continuous light on the victims of war, violence, and abuse.”

The idea for the campaign was born on April 15 when Eclipsed hosted two of the kidnapped girls who managed to escape.

Eclipsed dramatizes how such enslavement of women during the 12-year war affected their humanity. Gurira's play stars Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o.

Gurira told the AP, “The goal and the hope is that it brings awareness that causes people to want to get more involved and see how they can help. I've seen this country do amazing things with a collective consciousness, like around issues of apartheid back in the '80s. There's a way we, as a people, can effect change if we put our minds to it.”

The show has a history of activism. It's also part of the TenThousandGirls movement trying to raise money to bring 10,000 girls to Broadway, “girls from the tri-state area between the ages of 16 to 24, who will most likely never get to experience a Broadway show.”

 
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