Photo by Laura E. Rose

The singer-songwriter, star of the Broadway sensation Passing Strange and a Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright, uses the politically-charged song “Strange Fruit” as a point of departure to explore other classics of the period and protest songs from 1939 to today, including many of her own original compositions.

Eisa Davis is an actor, playwright, and singer-songwriter. Her plays include Bulrusher, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize (Urban Stages, Shotgun Players), Warriors Don't Cry (Cornerstone Theater Company), Hip Hop Anansi (Imagination Stage), Angela's Mixtape, Paper Armor, Six Minutes, Umkovu, and The History Of Light. Bulrusher is published in New Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2006. 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, 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.

A classically trained pianist with an unforgettable voice, Eisa has performed to acclaim at venues including Joe's Pub; BAMCafé; the Whitney Museum at Altria; Tonic; CB's Gallery and Lounge; Makor; the Nuyorican Poets Café; Galapagos; the Jazz Gallery; the Zipper; Sugar Bar; La Peña in Berkeley, CA; Santa Monica's Temple Bar; the Duncan Theater in Palm Beach, FL; and was a recurring musical guest on the Showtime series Soul Food. She was featured in the Broadway sensation Passing Strange, and has collaborated with Greg Tate's Burnt Sugar and Daniel T Denver/Tinctures.