A Conversation with Eisa Davis

On 19 January, TORCHES continues with a conversation with award-winning performer, writer, singer-songwriter for stage and screen Eisa Davis.

Eisa Davis is a performer, composer, and writer. A recipient of a USA Artists Fellowship, Creative Capital Award, an AUDELCO, an Obie for Sustained Excellence in Performance and the Herb Alpert Award in Theater, Eisa was also a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her play Bulrusher. Along with other stage works such as Angela's Mixtape, The Essentialisn't, ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :||, and the score for Devil In A Blue Dress: The Musical, she has written for television; recorded two albums of original music, Something Else and Tinctures; and directed a short film, Remembrance. Notable performance work includes Relay, Ex-Husbands, Kindred, Mare of Easttown, The Wire, Kings, the musical of The Secret Life of Bees, and Passing Strange. An alumna of New Dramatists and a Cave Canem fellow, Eisa co-created the Warriors concept album with Lin-Manuel Miranda. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

TORCHES: 30+ Years of Downtown Performance

As co-founder of HERE Arts Center—described by the Obie committee as “a lasting home for the weird and wild in downtown performance”—Kristin Marting spent the past three decades immersed in making, witnessing, and supporting groundbreaking performance in New York City. TORCHES is a much needed exploration of New York City’s unique and influential downtown performance world from the 1990s through the 2020s. Part memoir, part oral history, and part cultural inquiry, TORCHES offers in-depth video conversations with more than thirty of the most imaginative and boundary pushing artists working in the field today. TORCHES is both a living archive and an offering for the future. Learning about these artists and their work is not just looking back; it can ignite what’s coming next. They are not only inventors of form—they are keepers of community, fire-starters for our future. See more about the project on the TORCHES website at torchesnyc.org.

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