in which I hypnotize Rachmaninoff. a play with music by Dave Malloy, directed by Rachel Chavkin at LCT3.

here’s a great The New Yorker photo and article.

at Jack in Brooklyn and Joe’s Pub, we played songs mainly from the newest iteration of my musical work Flowers Are Sleeping.

I love music. it saves us all. here’s a video from Joe’s Pub. made a whoopsie, but also sang what I felt…

what had happened was…we all got together in a room and started letting the voices in the floor come on out. we stamped our feet and swayed our heads and with equanimity and ease, the music arrived. 1. got crazy singing with Stew and Rebecca Jones at the new BRIC studio. 2. Daniel Alexander Jones convened many wild women (including Sharon Bridgforth, Helga Davis, and Imani Uzuri) at Jack to sing traditional spirituals and ones of our own making…the evening still radiates like everyone must–especially in front of a wall of aluminum foil.

by creating this musical, I brought all of the things I do—acting, singing, writing music, writing scenes—into one room. absolutely liberating.

director Liesl Tommy, actor-singers Darius de Haas, Dashiell Eaves, Nicole Lewis, band members Jon Spurney, Mark Vanderpoel, Sydney Driver, Nick Rolfe, and visual artist Steffani Jemison worked with me to make this piece wonderful. and it all happened because of Laura Kaminsky commissioning me at Symphony Space.

here’s a little video from a rehearsal…

I won an Obie. for Sustained Excellence in Performance. what.

afro-futurism with Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Queen GodIs, and Rich Medina. 730pm.

Jay-Z is opening the Barclays Center the same night we toast BAM’s 150th anniversary, so we’re adding in a few hip hop samples in his honor. Garth Fagan Dance and Wynton Marsalis are performing earlier downstairs in the opera house, so we’ll do a couple of jazzy grand jetes as well. favorite jams, with a fresh sound. we’re flipping it, just like this picture. and, um, free? come on!

I am a recipient of the Alpert Award in Theatre, a distinction that has revived my optimism,  joy, and courage about playmaking. we had a fantastic time putting together the web feature for the award, which in many ways is a continuation and supplement of this site, and the conversations and experiences with the panelists, staff, and other awardees were unbelievably rich. I’m inspired, and hope you are too.

I’m previewing new songs from my musical-in-progress.

because you missed it, or you miss it, like me.

courtesy of Actors Equity Association. featuring Kim Brockington, Denise Burse, Eisa Davis, Ayesha Ngaujah, and Linda Powell, directed by Liesl Tommy. co-produced by Hip Hop Theater Festival and New Georges.

summering in LA has been a blast! doing a fantastic play with beautiful people, biking and surfing, catching up with dear friends. and the LA Times profiled me (in a good way) for last Sunday’s calendar section. click on the links below.

LA TIMES REVIEW

LA TIMES FEATURE ON EISA

we’re doing THIS again in LA at the Kirk Douglas Theater, in the company of Glenn Fitzgerald, Darren Pettie, Gilles Marini, Saffron Burrows, and director Daniel Aukin.

snuck back into the studio for a few minutes to lay this brief, unadorned song down. I wrote it for our medicine show with Third Root and the Foundry—lyrics inspired by a crucial practice and set of wisdoms in Tibetan Buddhism. here’s the first take. enjoy!

as prelude to The Piano Lesson, I am singing a couple of sets in New Haven at the Yale Cabaret.

new, gorgeous songs all about Brooklyn: the G train, your upwardly mobile rent, digging deep into the borough for safety and love.

constantly shifting selves and nothing but music to hold us.

no cover.

thanks to everyone who came out to hear the music at Joe’s Pub Memorial Day weekend. photos below by Nick Suttle and Kevin Yatarola.

she’ll be there. singing for all of you.