The Convert at Woolly Mammoth Theatre

The Convert

Woolly Mammoth Theatre
641 D St NW Washington

OBIE Award-winner Danai Gurira returns to Woolly with her rich, unflinching, and compassionate new play. Set amid the colonial scramble for Southern Africa in 1895, the play follows Jekesai, a young girl who escapes a forced marriage in her native village and lands in a Westernized household where Africans are pitted against each other over the arrival of Christianity.

Thru - Mar 10, 2013

Show Type: Drama

Box Office: 202-393-3939

www.woollymammoth.net

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The Convert Reviews

Average Rating based on 6 reviews

Highly Recommended
Recommended
Somewhat Recommended
Not Recommended

Washington Post - Recommended

"...It isn't every dramatist these days who can sustain a nuanced narrative through a full three hours and two intermissions - a feat that makes all the more impressive Danai Gurira's absorbing "The Convert," her tale of a young African woman's escape from the tyranny of her background and into the supposedly emancipating embrace of the faith of the continent's Christian colonizers."

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- Peter Marks

DC Theater Arts - Highly Recommended

".. Complex cultural and religious collisions come to a head at a play most befitting of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company’s 33rd Season: My Roots, My Revolution. OBIE Award-winning playwright Danai Gurira brings to the stage her new work The Convert, a compelling drama set in 1895 amid the South African scramble for colonization. The escape of village life and the practices of non-Christian customs set against Catholic conversion make this drama a remarkably compelling ride that races to a dramatic conclusion the likes of which will stun the audience to the core. Directed by Michael John Garcès, the play unfolds in three acts and builds momentum every step of the way."

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- Amanda Gunther

DCist - Highly Recommended

"...As a woman of color, Gurira has a voice that is both important and all-too-often screamingly absent from theater. As a writer, Gurira is a force to be reckoned with. How nice to finally get an Eliza Doolittle who fights back."

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- Alexis Victoria Hauk

Washington City Paper - Recommended

"...That all of these women will come to grief begins to feel foreordained by the second of three long acts in Michael John Garcés’ straightforward staging, with plot twists taking the story out of the missionary’s house and into a broader social realm, blunting the force of an ambitious drama that starts out vivid and specific (long early scenes are spoken entirely in Shona dialect), only to end up feeling diffuse and melodramatic."

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- Bob Mondello

Washingtonian - Recommended

"...With a little careful pruning The Convert could be as wrenching as Lynn Nottage's Ruined or as thought-provoking as Bruce Norris's Clybourne Park (one of Woolly's most brilliant productions of the last few years). Gurira-an actress and playwright whose bio includes writing/starring in the critically acclaimed play In the Continuum and a current gig on AMC's zombie thriller The Walking Dead-sets her scene in the charged locale of late-19th-century southern Africa, when colonialism was wreaking havoc on native culture. The conflicts between old and new, black and white, Christianity and voodoo couldn't be any more enticing or relevant to a 21st-century audience."

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- Sophie Gilbert

MD Theatre Guide - Recommended

"...The issues addressed by The Convert are still very much with us today in our post-colonial world. Though little discussed by our talking head media, the rage of the oppressed still burns in the world's streets every day. As well, the struggles of women to free themselves from violence expressed itself only recently with the One Billion Rising event this past February 14th. Evangelism, by itself and as it operates in combination with invasion and occupation, still raises questions throughout the developing world. The Convert might not offer an uplifting answer to those most disturbing questions, but it does present an authentic response. That response should provide each of us with grist for our own mills, if we are inclined to search for answers to life's most troubling ethical situations."

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- Robert Michael Oliver

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The Convert at Woolly Mammoth Theatre

The Convert

The Convert Reviews

Washington Post - Recommended

DC Theater Arts - Highly Recommended

DCist - Highly Recommended

Washington City Paper - Recommended

Washingtonian - Recommended

MD Theatre Guide - Recommended

The Convert Photo Gallery

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