Our Team

DANAI GURIRA

Executive Artistic Director & Co-Founder

Danai Gurira is an award-winning playwright and actress. Distinguished as the first African female writer to have a play on Broadway, and to bring the perspective of African women to mainstream theater, her stage plays give voice to untold narratives. They include In the Continuum (OBIE Award, Outer Critics Award, Helen Hayes Award), Eclipsed (Tony 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, L.A. Outer Critics Award). Her newest play, Familiar, received its world premiere at Yale Rep and premiered in New York at Playwrights Horizons in February of 2016. Commissioned by Yale Rep, Center Theatre Group, Playwrights Horizons, and the Royal Court, she is a recipient of the Sam Norkin Award (2016 Drama Desk Awards), a Whiting Award as well as a Hodder Fellowship.

As an actor, Gurira starred as General Okoye in Marvel’s 2018 Academy Award-winning blockbuster film Black Panther, for which she won a People’s Choice Award (Favorite Action Movie Star), an NAACP Image Award (Outstanding Supporting Actress/Motion Picture) and a shared SAG Award (Outstanding Performance by a Cast/Motion Picture). Later that year she reprised her role in Avengers: Infinity War and again in Avengers: Endgame, which went on to become the #1 top grossing film in history.

She most recently starred in her final season as Michonne on AMC’s The Walking Dead, which remains a top-rated cable program in its tenth season. Her other acting credits include the feature films All Eyez on Me, Mother of George, The Visitor, and Shakespeare in the Park’s stage production of Measure for Measure (Equity Callaway Award).

Born in Iowa to Zimbabwean parents and raised in Zimbabwe, Gurira holds an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. An ambassador for Bono’s ONE campaign, she is co-founder of Almasi Arts Alliance, which works to give access and opportunity to African dramatic artists. With a personal dedication to effect tangible change in gender equality and push global leaders toward real policy transformation, she is founder of Love Our Girls, which spotlights the specific challenges faced by women and girls while celebrating the courageous work by organizations seeking to make a difference. In December 2018 she was also named a Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women, supporting its mandate of gender equality and women’s rights and leveraging her celebrity as an amplifier of other women’s voices. | danai@almasiarts.org

ZAZA MUCHEMWA

Associate Artistic Director

Zaza Muchemwa authored the short story, Dance with yesterday and the plays, The IVth interrogation, Numbers and A Westerly Wind. Her poetry has been published on Pen International Website, Badilisha Poetry Xchange, in Zimbabwean Newspapers and included in the Zimbabwean Women Poetry Anthology by Carnelian Heart Publishing, ‘Tesserae’, Zimbabwe Poets for Human Rights Anthology, ‘All Protocols Observed’ and Cyphers Poetry Anthology Volume 87. She has written for Index on Censorship Magazine, Povo Magazine, MUD Journal and other publications. Zaza is an award-winning theatre director and producer, directing several productions including The Incident by Joakim Daun which won the 2018 NAMA Award for outstanding theatre production, and How are you really? By Chiedza Rwodzi, which won a NAMA award for outstanding theatrical production and a NAMA award for outstanding director for 2022.

Zaza is the Associate Artistic Director for Almasi Collaborative Arts. She is director of a series of plays, We Are Us by Vaviri Creative, which had a successful run at Kampala International Theatre Festival 2023.

Zaza is a 2022 Honorary Fellow in Creative Writing with the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. | elizabeth@almasiarts.org

GIDEON JEPH WABVUTA

Programmes Coordinator

Gideon Jeph Wabvuta is a writer, solo actor and teaching artist. He is a 2019 graduate of the University of Southern California MFA Dramatic Writing program. At present he is the programs coordinator for Almasi Collaborative Arts whilst serving as an Ojai Playwrights Conference Associate Artist and teaching in the OPC Youth Workshop. His work as a writer includes Family Riots, a play which was awarded the Distinguished Mention for the Rosa Parks and Lorraine Hansberry awards by the Kennedy Center in 2019. The same play was also staged as part of the New Works Two Festival at USC. He also developed Master’s Shoe at the Almasi African Playwrights festival which led to him creating his solo show Mbare Dreams At OPC which he again performed at the Revolutions Festival 2016 in Albuquerque New Mexico. His play The Color of Blood, showcased at Pasadena Playhouse, also won the Paragon playwriting award. His works have been showcased in multiple countries around the world and he has taught writing in various countries. He has also worked in the US tv industry as a writer and writer’s assistant for shows in development. Gideon’s artistic goal is to create works of art that will reclaim and reframe the African narrative on the world stage.