Uzane

Eisa Davis ~ Playwriter / Musician / Songwriter / Actress / Singer

CATEGORY: THEATER TAG: DRAMA

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.