New Dramatists: Eisa Davis

	Eisa Davis c/o New Dramatists 424 West 44th Street New York, NY 10036 Email: newdramatists@newdramatists.org Website: www.myspace.com/eisadavis

Eisa Davis’s plays include BULRUSHER, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 (Urban Stages, Shotgun Players fall 2007, published in New Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2006), WARRIORS DON’T CRY (Cornerstone Theater Company), HIP HOP ANANSI (Imagination Stage), ANGELA'S MIXTAPE (Synchronicity Theatre, 2008), SECRETARY OF SHAKE (in Point of Revue, Mixed Blood), PAPER ARMOR, SIX MINUTES, UMKOVU, and THE HISTORY OF LIGHT (commissioned by the Geva). Eisa is a resident playwright at New Dramatists. She is also the winner of the Helen Merrill Award, the Whitfield Cook Award, the John Lippmann New Frontier Award, and has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Cave Canem, and the Van Lier and Mellon Foundations. Her work has been developed by the Hip Hop Theater Festival, New York Theater Workshop, New York Stage and Film, LAByrinth Theater Company, the New Group, Soho Rep, the Flea, Rattlestick, the Cherry Lane, Portland Center Stage, Hartford Stage, Cleveland Playhouse, Seattle Rep, Yale University, Nuyorican Poets Café, the Schomburg Center for Black Research, and the Culture Project, among others. Eisa's writing has been published in American Theatre, The Source, To Be Real, Everything But The Burden, Step Into A World, Role Call, and Total Chaos. As an actress, Eisa's recent work includes the rock musical Passing Strange at the Public Theater, the films Robot Stories, Apparition of the Eternal Church, Happenstance, Confess, and The Architect, television appearances on The Wire and Law and Order, as well as numerous theatre credits in New York, regional theatres, development centers, and in her own plays. Eisa also performs her original songs at venues including Joe's Pub, BAMCafé, the Knitting Factory, Makor, the Whitney Museum @ Altria, and was a recurring musical guest on the Showtime series Soul Food. She released her first full-length album Something Else in May. A graduate of Harvard and the Actors Studio/New School, Eisa is a native of Berkeley, California.

BULRUSHER ANGELA'S MIXTAPE PAPER ARMOR WARRIOR'S DON'T CRY THE HISTORY OF LIGHT SIX MINUTES UMKOVU HIP HOP ANANSI
_{eisa davis} BULRUSHER Full-length, 2 Hours 3M, 3W In the redwood country north of San Francisco, an abandoned baby girl is raised in a small town whose residents speak their own strange language. Outcast for her lack of family and painfully accurate clairvoyance, she discovers her place when a visitor from Alabama opens up her insular world. Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize (2007). Produced at Urban Stages (2006) and Shotgun Players (2007). Readings and workshops at the Cherry Lane (2003), Hartford Stage (2004), JAW/West Fest at Portland Center Stage (2004), and San Francisco Stage and Film (2005). "Eisa Davis can't help herself, she's made giddy by language...she tickles the ears of her listeners..." --New York Times "...a lyrical poetic play with much nuance..." --NYTheatre.com
_{eisa davis} ANGELA’S MIXTAPE Full-length, 90 Minutes 5W When the revolutions of the 70s devolve into the materialism of the 80s, a girl born into an activist family has some unanswered questions. In this musical memoir, the author, niece of the legendary Angela Y. Davis, reveals her struggle to shine in the shadow of an icon. A quest for personal politics told through the powerful voices of five women and a hip hop beat. Upcoming production at Synchronicity Theatre (2008). Workshops through the Hip Hop Theatre Festival/New York Theater Workshop (2003), The Kitchen (2004), the Hip Hop Theater Festival/La Peña (2005), Second Stage (2005), New York Theater Workshop/Dartmouth (2006). Readings at New York Theater Workshop (2004 and 2006), Culture Project (2005), Oberlin College (2005), and the University of Utah (2007).
_{eisa davis} PAPER ARMOR Full-length Drama, 90 Minutes 1M, 3W In 1930, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston began collaborating on a play that destroyed their friendship. Now, a young woman hopes their 97 year-old stenographer can tell her why. Workshops at Geva Theatre and Cleveland Playhouse (2004). Readings at the Actors Studio (1999), the West Bank Café (2000), the Producer’s Club (2000), Nuyorican Poets Café (2001), Urban Stages (2001), Yale (2002) and The Women's Project (2002).
_{eisa davis} WARRIORS DON'T CRY Full-length 1W In 1957, a black girl’s wish to integrate the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas becomes an historical battleground that puts her life at stake. A one-woman, one hour adaptation of the memoir by Melba Pattillo Beals. Commissioned and produced by Cornerstone Theatre Company (2007).
_{eisa davis} THE HISTORY OF LIGHT Full-length, 2 Hours 2M, 2W A black woman who grew up without knowing her father gets more than she bargained for when his white college girlfriend tracks her down and shares the story of their tumultuous relationship. With this new knowledge of her past, the daughter's own always-romantic, never-consummated relationship with a white man she's known since childhood undergoes an irreversible transformation. Commissioned by the Geva Theatre (2005).
_{eisa davis} SIX MINUTES Full-length, 90 Minutes 1M, 1W A relationship between two black literary critics becomes more and more dangerous as they take their studies literally. If everything is just a text to be violently deconstructed, what can survive? Created in the Soho Rep Writer Director Lab (2004). Workshop at Seattle Rep's Women Playwrights Festival (2004), the Hip Hop Theater Festival's Critical Breaks Series at Aaron Davis Hall (2004), New York Stage and Film (2005), LAByrinth Theatre Company Summer Intensive (2007). Readings at PS 122 (2004), The New Group (2005), and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater (2006).
_{eisa davis} UMKOVU Full-length, 90 Minutes 5M, 3W Los Angeles. A receptionist obsessed with Pollo Loco, a hip hop activist in A&R, and a lesbian journalist all fall for the same voluntarily mute rapper. Problem is, he’s signed to a record label that boosts sales by murdering its own artists. A percussive love-rant on the casualties of success. Readings and workshops at the Schomburg Center for Black Research (2003), the Hip Hop Theatre Festival / PS 122 (2001), and The Flea (2001).
_{eisa davis} HIP HOP ANANSI Full-length 6 actors total (can be a mix of men and women) Anansi wants the Golden Fly Pie award for tricksters and is not above outwitting his own children to win it. But they’re budding tricksters too—and can rhyme, break, grafitti and DJ their way to the prize in their own right. Who’s fly? Who deserves the pie? An Ashanti folktale told in an urban hip hop context. Deaf and hearing accessible. Commissioned and produced by Imagination Stage (2006).


This page was last updated 08/02/2007 . For comments and/or questions please contact newdramatists@newdramatists.org