Ramp / Mushroom
In the plays collected here—Ramp and Mushroom—Pulitzer Prize finalist Eisa Davis mingles modes of myth and speculation, documentary and fiction in two plays about family, desire, restorative justice, ecological sustainability, and immigration amongst the working class. Ramp adapts the foundational Egyption saga of Isis / Osiris and sets on a near-future airline ramp, where siblings Isis, Osiris, Seth, and Nepthys throw luggage on planes and bicker about our thorny, precipitate futurity: should change be fast or gradual? Can the ecological revolution we require for survival produce ease and peace if it’s rooted in violence? Is the path to utopia brutal? Must it be? Mushroom centers on the lives, loves, and working conditions of the Mexican and Central American mushroom-pickers in and around the town of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, where over 40% of all the mushrooms we eat in this country come from. Through a series of intersecting narratives traversed by English, Spanish, K'iche' and Malayalam speakers, Mushroom considers a workplace dispute that has serious ramifications for multiple immigrant families, mapping how compassion and justice might intersect.
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, and is creating a limited series based on the memoir by Carlotta Walls LaNier, the youngest member of the Little Rock Nine. 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. 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 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 Betty, Bluff City Law, God Friended Me, Rise, Condi Rice on The Looming Tower.
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