Oscar-winning Hollywood actress Lupita Nyong'o will make her New York stage debut later this year, starring in a play set amid the horrors of the Liberian civil war.

The Public Theater in Manhattan said the production of "Eclipsed" would run from September 29 to November 8.

Nyong'o, 32, will play "The Girl" in what the theater called "a powerful story of survival and resilience" about women finding and testing their own strength in a hostile world.

The award-winning play sees captive wives of a rebel officer band together to form a fragile community, until their lives are upset by the arrival of a new girl.

It is written by Zimbabwean-American actress Danai Gurira, best known for her role on hit television series "The Walking Dead."

Public Theater's artistic director, Oskar Eustis, said it was a "brilliant play, ripped from the headlines, that looks at the terrible conflicts in post-colonial Africa."

Nyong'o was born in Mexico, brought up in Kenya and educated at the Yale School of Drama. She shot to international fame by winning an Oscar in 2014 for her role in "Twelve Years a Slave."

Liberia, Africa's oldest republic and formed by freed American slaves, was devastated by two civil wars which killed around 25,000 people between 1989 and 2003.