Eisa Davis is an actor, playwright, and singer-songwriter. Her plays include BULRUSHER, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize (Urban Stages, Shotgun Players fall 2007), 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 makes minimalist soul. Writing poetic laments over uplifting chord progressions, Eisa has performed to acclaim leading her band at venues including Joe’s Pub, BAMCafé, the Whitney Museum @ 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 has also collaborated with Greg Tate’s Burnt Sugar and Daniel T Denver/Tinctures.

A native of the Bay Area, Eisa began performing at an early age—in the living room. This after-dinner and weekend obsession began to get professional when she sang and acted at local political events, played Teeta in a UC Berkeley production of Alice Childress’s The Wedding Band, and warned other children about the dangers of excessive video gaming on the NBC show Just Kidding. Every summer, she studied piano, voice, composition and theory at UC Berkeley’s Young Musicians Program. Many high school theatre productions followed, and with other classmates, she formed a playwrights’ collective.

Eisa matriculated at Harvard College, concentrating in philosophy and cultural studies, and performing there in ten plays. She took a class with the legendary playwright Adrienne Kennedy, who in later years became her mentor. She was also cast in her first feature film there, and after graduating magna cum laude, moved to Los Angeles. There, she worked as an associate editor for the hip hop monthly Rap Sheet, covering artists like Digable Planets, Snoop, Dr. Dre, and the Pharcyde. She continued performing in plays, and also worked at the Mark Taper Forum as an assistant to Anna Deavere Smith.

Eisa moved to New York City to enroll in the Actors Studio MFA Program at the New School. She received her degree in both acting and playwriting and became a member of the Actors Studio. Cave Canem, an organization for black poets, was also a crucial locus for her continuing education. Eisa lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Learn more about Eisa on Eisa's myspace page.