In 2013, Lupita Nyong’o made one of the most memorable film débuts in recent years, in Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave.” As Patsey, a slave at a Louisiana plantation whose life is triply cursed by her master’s lust and his wife’s sadistic jealousy, Nyong’o showed the raw desperation that Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Solomon Northup buried beneath stoic forbearance. You couldn’t look away from Patsey’s suffering, or forget it. Born in Mexico and raised in Kenya, Nyong’o has said that she bargained with God as a child—she promised to stop stealing sugar cubes—in the hope that she would wake up with lighter skin. But, by the time she won the Academy Award, becoming the first Kenyan actress to do so, she had already become a red-carpet darling; Lancôme quickly snapped her up as their ambassadress. Her star power was unassailable. So was her radiant beauty. How would Hollywood mess this up?
It seemed less than promising when she was cast, soon after, in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” as a C.G.I.-enhanced alien pirate. At the Yale School of Drama, from which she graduated, in 2012, she had done Shakespeare and Chekhov. Could no one find her a character from within this galaxy? Perhaps that has something to do with why Nyong’o is coming to the Public Theatre, in her first New York stage role. “Eclipsed” (starting previews Sept. 29), which tells the story of a group of women held captive during the Liberian Civil War, in 2003, is by the Zimbabwean-American playwright Danai Gurira, best known for her role on “The Walking Dead” and for her and Nikkole Salter’s advocacy-inflected play, “In the Continuum,” about the global impact of H.I.V. Nyong’o has also advocated for international causes, from elephant conservation to ending prejudice against albinos. Let’s hope that this role, and plenty more to come, will give her the chance not just to inspire but to stretch her sizable talents. She has said she’s interested in doing comedy. Any takers? ♦