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ECLIPSED at the Curran

Joniece Abbott-Pratt on her role as Wife #3: “Bessie is a warrior in another sense. She’s more about love. She’s softer. She’s pregnant. But we’re all warriors in real life in different ways too. We are all designed to survive. We can manifest that in whatever way we want - whether you want to get up every day and just make yourself breakfast, which is what I feel like doing, while others of us feel as if we have to rule countries. Each of our missions in life are different but we all have a purpose. When you get up and are energized for the day and for what your purpose is for your life - that’s ‘warriorship.’”

Akosua Busia on her role as Rita: “The play is about the Liberian war and these four wives who are captured. My character - the fifth one in the play - is the outsider who is also known as Ma Peace. Rita is one of the ‘peace women’ of Liberia who helped to stop the war. She was a woman of privilege. I say ‘was” because war in the end touches everybody because it will eventually come to your door in one or the other even if you think it won’t. Rita’s daughter has been captured by the rebels and her first thought is the search for her daughter but in that search she becomes more and more and more involved and aware.”

Ayesha Jordan on her role as The Girl: “This play and this role speak to me about ways to be empowered, self-reliant, self-caring. This role speaks to me about healing and be who we are and exist the way we want to exist. Because in this play that is not what happens for these women and especially this girl. This play not only shows the turmoil of this war but also the way these women didn’t get to live their lives. For me that accentuates the fact that for me as a woman living my life in the free world that I should live my own life fully and not to take anything for granted. And also I should not allow anyone to run me over and try to keep me from existing the way I want to exist.”

Adeola Role on her portrayal of Wife #2: “She has a leadership role and she's a woman. It's not that she has the power just because she has a gun. It's because she is a powerful woman and has chosen to take the war into her own hands, literally. In a way, we are all - all the characters in the play - complicit in the war since it is about what choice one makes to survive. It is important for Maima to own her femininity in the midst of all of this and that is why you see her in midriffs and a gun.”

Stacey Sergeant and her portrayal of WIfe #1: “She is the rock for these women in this compound. She to me is like the person who makes lemonade out of lemons. She is someone who tries to create order within the chaos that exits in this world and while that is happening I think her inner world is kind of cracked open once Rita arrives to show her there are other possibilities.”

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