Award-winning creator and actor Eisa Davis transforms JACK into a contemporary art museum hosting The Essentialisn’t - a transatlantic undrowning ---in a pasture of hair. This original sound-based conceptual art work uses movement, voice and electronics to reanimate modernist figures from the Harlem Renaissance. Focusing on a central question - “Can you be black and not perform?” Davis cultivates a black feminine practice of presence and sovereignty.
Location
20 Putnam Avenue in Brooklyn, C or G train to Clinton-Washington. Accessible station at Franklin Avenue C/Shuttle train.
Performance Dates & Times
Thursday, May 4th at 7:30pm
Friday, May 5th at 7:30 pm
Saturday, May 6th at 7:30 pm
Sunday, May 7th at 3:00 pm
Thursday, May 11th at 7:30pm
Friday, May 12th at 7:30 pm
Saturday, May 13th at 7:30 pm
About the Artists
Eisa Davis is a writer, composer, and performer. A recipient of a Creative Capital Award, an Obie for Sustained Excellence in Performance, the Herb Alpert Award in Theater, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her play Bulrusher. Davis wrote and starred in the stage memoir Angela’s Mixtape. Other works include Paper Armor, Umkovu, Hip Hop Anansi, Six Minutes, The History Of Light (Barrymore nomination), Warriors Don’t Cry, Ramp (Ruby Prize), ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||:, The Essentialisn’t, and Mushroom. A multivolume series of her plays is soon to be published by 53rd State Press. She led the 2021 black femme celebration of Kathleen Collins’ work AFROFEMONONOMY // WORK THE ROOTS, and she has recorded two albums of her original music — Something Else and Tinctures — and has enjoyed a multi-decade career as a performer on stage and screen. Current projects for the stage include the libretto for an opera adaptation of Bulrusher and the music and lyrics for Devil In A Blue Dress. An alumna of New Dramatists, she has received residencies, awards, and fellowships from the Hermitage Artist Retreat, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Helen Merrill Foundation, the Van Lier and Mellon Foundations, New Dramatists, and Cave Canem. Davis was born and raised in the Bay Area and lives in Brooklyn. eisadavis.com