Bulrusher by Eisa Davis
September 17, 2020

In 1955, in the redwood country north of San Francisco, a multiracial girl grows up in a predominantly white town whose residents pepper their speech with the historical dialect of Boontling. Found floating in a basket on the river as an infant, Bulrusher is an orphan with a gift for clairvoyance that makes her feel like a stranger even amongst the strange: the taciturn schoolteacher who adopted her, the madam who runs her brothel with a fierce discipline, the logger with a zest for horses and women, and the guitar-slinging boy who is after Bulrusher's heart. Just when she thought her world might close in on her, she discovers an entirely new sense of self when a black girl from Alabama comes to town.

Cast: Edmund Donovan, Sydney Elisabeth, André Holland, Tanis Parenteau, Corey Stoll, Kara Young
Stage Manager: Jhanaë Bonnick
Director: Eisa Davis

Bios

EISA DAVIS is a Brooklyn-based, Berkeley-born writer, composer, and performer working on stage and screen. A 2020 Creative Capital Awardee, Herb Alpert Award recipient, Cave Canem fellow, and Obie winner for Sustained Excellence in Performance, Eisa was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her play Bulrusher, and wrote and starred in the stage memoir Angela’s Mixtape. Other work includes The Essentialisn’t, Ramp (Ruby Prize winner), The History of Light (Barrymore nomination), Paper Armor, Umkovu, Six Minutes, Warriors Don’t Cry, Mushroom, ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| and the collaborations Active Ingredients and Hip Hop Anansi. Eisa wrote for both seasons of the Spike Lee Netflix series She's Gotta Have It, penned the narration for Cirque du Soleil's first ice show Crystal, and has released two albums of music. Performance work includes Betty, Succession, The Looming Tower, After The Wedding, House of Cards, The Wire, Bluff City Law, Rise, God Friended Me, Carrie Mae Weems’ Grace Notes/Past Tense, Theatre For One (virtual platform), the musical adaptation of The Secret Life of Bees, Kings, Julius Caesar, Preludes, Luck of the Irish, The Call, This, and Passing Strange.

Sue Slagle (stage name SUE-C) is a video artist and educator working at the intersection of creative coding and live performance. For the past 20 years she has created handmade videos and live media performances, taught college level courses and workshops, and traveled extensively in the USA and internationally. Her works challenge the norms of photography, video, motion graphics and technology by blending them all into an organic and improvisational live performance setting. Employing a variety of digital tools to create an experimental animation "instrument," she synthesizes cinema from photographs, drawings, watercolors, hand-made papers, fabrics and lighting effects using custom software created in the Max programming environment. Sue is the recipient of a 2020 Creative Capital Award and a MacDowell Fellowship. She has performed and exhibited at many national and international venues and festivals including the Library of Congress, San Francisco International Film Festival, Oberhausen Short Film Festival, SFMoMA, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, REDCAT, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Arts, Pacific Film Archive, EMPAC, Ars Electronica, MUTEK, SONAR, Sonic Light, Transmediale, Marco Museum, ICA London and Laboral. She has toured extensively throughout the USA and Europe. Current and past collaborators include Negativland, Dynasty Handbag, Laetitia Sonami, Morton Subotnick, Luc Ferrari, Antye Greie (AGF), Golan Levin, Joshua Kit Clayton, Wobbly, Sutekh, Matmos and Vladislav Delay. Sue has taught courses and workshops at Mills College, California College of the Arts, San Francisco Art Institute, Portland Community College, Pacific Northwest College of Art, UCLA, Open Signal and La Casa Encendida. https://www.sue-c.net/

André Holland’s film credits include High Flying Bird, Ava DuVernay’s adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, Moonlight (Academy Award for Best Picture), Selma (Academy Award Nominee), 42, Miracle at St. Anna, and the acclaimed 2008 independent film Sugar. Holland TV Credit’s include the Stephen King inspired series, Castle Rock (Hulu/Bad Robot) and Steven Soderbergh’s The Knick. Holland made his Broadway debut in the Tony Award-winning 2009 revival of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and most recently performed in Othello alongside Academy Award and Tony-Winning actor Mark Rylance at Shakespeare’s Globe Theater. Other select theater credits include the Tony Award-Winning production of August Wilson’s Jitney, The Whipping Man at MTC, The Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park productions of All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Much Ado About Nothing and As You Like It.

Tanis Parenteau is an actor/producer and a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta (Cree). TV credits include Billions, FBI: Most Wanted, Designated Survivor and House of Cards. She has starred in plays at The Public Theater, Signature Theater, 59E59 Theaters and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Tanis also does frequent voice over work and narrates audiobooks for Penguin Random House, Audible, Hachette and Simon & Schuster. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Acting from New School for Drama and a Bachelor of Physical Education from the University of Alberta. Tanis is on the producing team at Red House Studios developing a narrative drama series titled Red House and recently launched a podcast called "Not Invisible: Native Womxn on the Frontlines", in which Tanis is also the host. She is also the Events and Media Manager at the American Indian Community House and also runs the Fit Native TV program and the Native American Industry Roster. www.tanisparenteau.com

COREY STOLL. New York theater: Macbeth, Othello, Julius Caesar, Plenty, Troilus and Cressida, A View from the Bridge, and Intimate Apparel (Drama Desk nomination). Selected television: Mike Prince on “Billions,” “The Deuce,” “Baghdad Central,” “The Romanoffs,” Guillermo del Toro’s “The Strain,” “Girls,” and “House of Cards” (Golden Globe nomination). Selected films: The Report, First Man, The Seagull, Ant-Man, Black Mass, Cafe Society, This Is Where I Leave You, and Midnight in Paris (Independent Spirit Award nomination). Upcoming: Ryan Murphy’s “Ratched,” Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, and the Sopranos prequel, The Many Saints of Newark. MFA: NYU Grad Acting.

Kara Young: Harlem Born and raised to two Belizean Parents. Film/TV: Chemical Hearts (Amazon, dir. Richard Tanne), After Yang (A24, dir. Kogonada), The lead in Hair Wolf, winner of Sundance 2018 Short film Jury Award: US fiction, Random Acts of Flyness (HBO), The Punisher (Netflix). Theater: All The Natalie Portmans (dir. Kate Whoriskey, MCC) Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven (dir. John Ortiz, Atlantic), New Englanders (dir Saheem Ali, MTC), Revolving Cycles Truly and Steadily Roll'd (dir. Awoye Timpo, The Duke), Syncing Ink (Written and Concieved by Nsangou Njikam), Pretty Hunger (dir. Martha Banta, The Public). 2020 Lucille Lortel Nominee for Outstanding Actress & 2020 Antonyo Award Nominee for best Actor in a Play Off-Broadway. Live Voice Over Announcer for 2018, 2019, 2020 MTV Video Music Awards, MTV's Girl Code (4 seasons). @karaakter

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