Pictured (L to R): Morayo Orija, Aja Singletary, Sola Thompson, Maya V. Prentiss, and Adhana Reid. Photo by Emily Schwartz.

Pegasus Theatre Chicago has announced the cast and design team for Danai Gurira’s ECLIPSED.

Directed by Producing Artistic Director Ilesa Duncan, the cast includes Morayo Orija, Maya V. Prentiss, Aja Singletary, Adhana Reid, and Sola Thompson.

The production team includes Jacqueline Penrod (scenic design), Megan Turnquist (lighting design), Owé Engobor (costume design), Tony Bruno (sound design), R&D Choreography (violence design), Amanda Caputi (properties design), Carrie Hardin (dialect coach), Tanuja Jagernauth (dramaturg), Jennifer McClendon (production manager), and Justine Palmisano (stage manager).

ECLIPSED, the first play to premiere on Broadway with an all-female and black cast and creative team, was inspired by a photo that Gurira saw in The New York Times. “I was raised in Africa and I had never seen anything like it, women with AK-47s, dressed very hip and looking formidable,” she said. “I was keen to one day pursue that story and put it on the stage.” Taking place in a bullet-ridden rebel army camp during the Liberian civil war in 2003, the five “wives” of a commanding officer band together to form a fragile community and care for a 15-year-old girl who has been abducted. The balance of their lives is upset by the return of a former “wife” turned rebel soldier and, as the war draws to a close, each woman must discover her own personal means of survival.

ECLIPSED runs October 4 – November 4 at Pegasus’s resident home Chicago Dramatists, 773 N. Aberdeen. For more information visit PegasusTheatreChicago.org.