ABOUT
EISA DAVIS is an award-winning actor, writer, and singer-songwriter working on stage and screen. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her play Bulrusher, and wrote and starred in Angela’s Mixtape, named a best of the year by The New Yorker. Other plays include Ramp (Ruby Prize winner), The History of Light (Barrymore nomination), Paper Armor, Umkovu, Six Minutes, Warriors Don’t Cry, ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||, and Mushroom. Collaborations include AFROFEMONONOMY // WORK THE ROOTS, Maze at The Shed, The House on Coco Road, Active Ingredients, Hip Hop Anansi, and Cirque du Soleil’s first ice show, Crystal. Works in progress include a sound art installation/performance piece entitled The Essentialisn’t, and a musical version of Devil In A Blue Dress. Eisa wrote for both seasons of the Netflix series She’s Gotta Have It, and has co-written two episodes for the upcoming FX series Justified: City Primeval.
Eisa is a 2020 Creative Capital recipient. She was awarded the prestigious Herb Alpert Award in Theatre, and was a resident playwright at New Dramatists, where she won the Helen Merrill Award and the Whitfield Cook Award, among others. She has received fellowships from Sundance, Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, Cave Canem, and the Doris Duke, Van Lier and Mellon Foundations. In addition to dozens of workshops at academic and arts institutions, Eisa has taught semester-long courses at Princeton and Williams.
As an actor, she is an Obie Award winner for Sustained Excellence in Performance. Eisa’s recent work includes a microplay by Lynn Nottage in the virtual series Theatre For One, the role of June in the musical adaptation of The Secret Life of Bees (AUDELCO award, Lortel nomination), Kings at the Public (Drama League nomination), the 2017 Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar, and Preludes created by Dave Malloy and Rachel Chavkin, for which she received her second Lucille Lortel nomination. Other theatre performances include Antigone in Ferguson, Luck of the Irish (Lucille Lortel and AUDELCO nominations), the world premieres of This and The Call, the first revival of The Piano Lesson at Yale Rep (also composer and music director), and the acclaimed Broadway rock musical Passing Strange, captured on film by Spike Lee. Current television work includes Kindred, Mare of Easttown, Pose, Betty, Bluff City Law, God Friended Me, Rise, Blindspot, Condi Rice on The Looming Tower, and Succession. Eisa played Cynthia Driscoll on House of Cards, and was Bubbles’ sister on The Wire. She has guest starred on Falling Water, The Family, Elementary, Madam Secretary, American Odyssey, Gotham, The Blacklist, The Good Wife, Mercy, and Damages, and recurred on Soul Food, Smash and Hart of Dixie. Film work includes Men of Divorce (upcoming), After The Wedding, First Match, Free Angela, Welcome to the Rileys (opposite James Gandolfini), In The Family, Robot Stories, The Architect, Confess, Happenstance, Pretty Bird, Apparition of the Eternal Church, Brass Tacks, The Letter and The Volunteer.
As a singer-songwriter, music from her albums Something Else and Tinctures is available through iTunes and Soundcloud. Selections from Tinctures were featured on the Showtime series Soul Food. Eisa sings her original music at venues including Joe’s Pub, BAMCafé, Bard Spiegeltent, Mass MoCA, the Whitney Museum, Rockwood, Le Poisson Rouge, and the Apollo. She has toured as a featured performer in Carrie Mae Weems’ Grace Notes/Past Tense (Spoleto Festival, Yale Rep, the Kennedy Center, Theatre @ the Ace, Grace Farms).
Eisa is a member of The Actors Studio, a Usual Suspect at New York Theater Workshop, and was an artist-in-residence at Symphony Space. A graduate of The New School and Harvard, she lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Eisa Davis…fills every corner of the room….open faced and open hearted.—
Hilton Als, The New Yorker
Intelligent…radiant…flawless…
Charles Isherwood, The New York Times
Watching Davis reveal her soul through her songs, and also embody the souls of different characters, is like peeling back the petals of a rare flower. Her lyrics mirror the full gamut of love, relationships, and life experiences. By stripping emotions to their essence, then illuminating them in powerful stories, Davis provides a mirror for audience members to see their own beauty in her songs.
Christian John Wikane, Pop Matters
PRESS
PEN.org conversation with Eisa Nefertari Ulen
photo by Dennis Johnston
site design by TJ Weaver