Danai Gurira

Danai Gurira is an award-winning playwright and actress. As a playwright, her works include In the Continuum (OBIE Award, Outer Critics Award, Helen Hayes Award), Eclipsed (Tony Award Nomination: Best Play; NAACP Award; Helen Hayes Award: Best New Play; Connecticut Critics Circle Award: Outstanding Production of a Play), and The Convert (six Ovation Awards, Los Angeles Outer Critics Award). Her newest play, Familiar, received its world premiere at Yale Rep in 2015, and premiered in New York at Playwrights Horizons in February of 2016. She is a recipient of the Sam Norkin Award at the 2016 Drama Desk Awards, a Whiting Award, a Hodder Fellow, and has been commissioned by Yale Rep, Center Theatre Group, Playwrights Horizons, and the Royal Court. As an actor, she currently co-stars in Marvel’s blockbuster phenomenon Black Panther as “Okoye,” opposite Michael B. Jordan, Chadwick Boseman, and Lupita Nyong’o; and as “Michonne” on AMC’s “The Walking Dead” (NAACP Image Award nomination). Recently, she starred as “Afeni Shakur” in the Tupac Shakur biopic All Eyez on Me, and will next appear in Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War. Other select acting credits include the films The Visitor and Mother of George, and “Isabelle” in NYS&F’s Measure for Measure (Equity Callaway Award.) Born in the US to Zimbabwean parents and raised in Zimbabwe, she holds an MFA from Tisch, NYU and serves as an ambassador for Bono’s ONE campaign. She is also the founder of LOGpledge.org, an awareness building campaign focused on the plights of women and girls around the globe; and the co-founder of Almasi Arts, which works to give access and opportunity to the African Dramatic Artist. almasiartsalliance.org. Twitter/Instagram: @danaigurira. Facebook: @DanaiGuriraOfficial.