The Convert: (Student Editions)

It's 1896 in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and Jekesai, a young Shona girl, escapes a forced arranged marriage by converting to Christianity and becoming a protégé to an African Evangelical. As anti-colonial sentiments spread throughout the native population, Jekesai is forced to choose between her family's traditions and her newfound faith. This Student Edition of Danai Gurira's 2012 play The Convert includes a commentary by Aviva Neff.

Table of Contents:
Chronology Commentary Playwright Overview of her other works; connection to Blank Panther Cultural/Historical Context & Themes British Colonialism, enslavement, the collision of indigenous religions & Catholicism, the loss and rediscovery of faith, women's rights & gendered hierarchies, war, race, "civilization" Relationship to other art & literature on colonisation (such as Nottage's Ruined and Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman) Religious radicalism: then and now Characters Jekesai/"Ester" as a lens for experiencing the rise of Christian colonialism Mai Tamba's religious duality Chilford as the "model" convert Place Mashona & Matabeleland / Rhodesia Language Different forms of language (including Chishona) Language and culture and its links to politics and identity Play in performance Costume, music and movement Influences George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion Black Panther Productions and adaptations Overview of production history and critical casting, including its world premiere at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago, and the play's place in Kwame Kwei-Armah's inaugural season at the Young Vic, London PLAY TEXT Notes

About the Author :
Danai Gurira is an award-winning Zimbabwean American actor and playwright. As a playwright, her works include In The Continuum (OBIE Award, Outer Critics Award, Helen Hayes Award), Eclipsed (NAACP Award; Helen Hayes Award, Best New Play), The Convert (six Ovation Awards, Los Angeles Outer Critics Award), and Familiar, which has its world premiere at Yale Rep in February 2015. She is the recipient of the Whiting Award, a former Hodder Fellow and has been commissioned by Yale Rep, Center Theatre Group, Playwrights Horizons and the Royal Court. She is the co-founder of Almasi Collaborative Arts, which works to give access and opportunity to the African Dramatic Artist. Aviva Neff is an artist-scholar-educator with extensive experience in youth and community engaged art. A graduate of the College of Wooster, Aviva received her MA in Applied Theatre with distinction from Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK, and her PhD from Ohio State University, US. She teaches in Otterbein University's department of Theatre and Dance and serves as an intimacy coordinator in theatre productions at Columbus College of Art and Design.

Review :
A work considering questions of racial, political and religious identity and assimilation with a provocative intelligence Ms. Gurira ... chronicles the human cost of this turbulent history with impressive clarity and thoroughness ... Of course, [she] has the perspective of a hundred and more years of history to draw on in dramatizing the moral and ethical issues involved in the missionary impulse, and its alliance with the forces of colonization. It is to her credit that she rarely allows The Convert to devolve into an admonishing tract. There is sympathy in her depiction of all the play's characters, who cannot see how powerless they are to control their own fates. Believers in the old ways or adherents of the new, they are united in being caught in the grip of forces larger than themselves.