Following Warriors, Eisa Davis Has 2 New Shows Premiering in New York

When audiences enter the theatre for Eisa Davis’ show The Essentialisn’t, they see a striking sight: Davis herself suspended above a tall tank of water, made of glass. As she submerges herself, she only has a rope and her own water-treading skills to keep her head above water—while singing “I’m crossin’ the water.” Suddenly, the air in the theatre at HERE Arts Center crackles with energy, at the associations of Black bodies and water, as well as a slight fear of whether Davis can get out of the tank.

Davis likes that sense of danger, laughing when I told her about my fear on her behalf. “They’re refilling the tank today, for opening night,” she says. “It’s the champagne of tap water in New York.”

The Essentialisn’t is a homecoming of sorts for Davis. It is at HERE Arts Center, the venue where she performed in her first play in New York. And it is also the first work that Davis has written to be performed in New York since 2009’s Angela’s Mixtape (though her Pulitizer Prize-nominated play Bulrusher was livestreamed during the pandemic). After last year’s warm response to the Warriors concept album, which Davis wrote with Lin-Manuel Miranda, the actor-writer-musician is following it up with two shows Off-Broadway this season: The Essentialisn’t runs at HERE until September 28 and ||: Girls :||: Chance :||: Music :|| will run at the Vineyard Theatre in spring 2026. Both shows share the themes of Black womanhood and artistry, with original songs by Davis (though she won’t perform in the latter show).

For Davis, whose Broadway credits include Passing Strange, this moment has been a long time coming. “Certain people think of me more as an actor, and other people think of me more as a writer,” she muses from her home in Brooklyn, an upright piano behind her. “Right now, I’m just kind of doing all these different things. The folks that I’m close to—people like Lin, Shaina Taub, Taylor Mac—do all these things at once. So to me, it’s not a strange thing. I love being in other people’s visions. I love acting and bringing those worlds to life. And then I love writing my own stuff … I want to just be able to share all this music that I make and love.”

Eisa Davis in The Essentialisn’t
Daniel J. Vasquez

Davis grew up in Berkeley, California, as part of a family of political activists—though Davis established herself as an artist quite early, having studied classical piano beginning at the age of 10. Her full name is actually Angela Eisa Davis. She was named after her aunt, Angela Davis, a Civil Rights icon who once spent 18 months in jail. Davis’ 2009 memoir play Angela’s Mixtape, which she starred in, found her asking the question of how she can live up to her aunt’s name. In the years since, she’s made peace with that question, noting serenely, “The way that I’ve come to understand is that it’s really a conversation with my own standards. And my family, my mother, and my aunt, I’m sure they were just probably a little frustrated with, like, ‘Why do you think it’s us when it’s you?’”

And Davis has figured out the best way for her to make an impact on the world: through her artistry. The Essentialisn’t has one big question at its center: “Can you be Black and not perform?” Davis gets the answer out of the way fast in the show; it’s a resounding no, sung in perfect harmony with her onstage costars Jamella Cross and Princess Jacob. The play, which Davis has been working on since 2016, takes its inspiration from the concept of existentialism, which says “every entity has a set of attributes that are necessary to its identity and function.”

Davis then reads off scraps of paper, given to her by audience members who were asked to write down what they believe to be essential traits of Black women: “Naturally musical,” “helper,” “sis,” “auntie,” “gurl,” “doesn’t need a man,” “beautiful voice.” After she finishes reading the items, she notes “No one wrote free.” But to Davis, if those are the essential traits of Black womanhood, is she failing if she doesn’t embody those traits? And are those traits intrinsic or forced upon? They’re tricky questions, but in Davis’ expert hands, it’s explored through songs, audience participation, and moving moments of connection and care between Davis and her costars—they sip tea together onstage and end the show laughing.

“There’s this obvious way in which there’s a kind of performance of Blackness that is required by white supremacy,” says Davis. “Part of the way that I look at the world, particularly given what my upbringing has been, is that when there are particular individual experiences, I’m looking to a systemic cause for how that might impact our individual existence.”

Eisa Davis, Princess Jacob, and Jamella Cross in The Essentialisn’t
Daniel J. Vasquez

And that question of performance is even trickier when Davis considers her own career as an actor, since she also finds meaning and freedom through performance but at the same time, as she sings in the show: “I’m just here for your convenience / I play sidekick to main characters / And their dimensional front stories / But no one knows me / No one knows me.”

But when performed in front of a diverse audience, Davis hopes that the questions she asks can also be applied to anyone—what do we think are our own essential traits, and are they natural to us or placed by societal forces? The show’s lighting designer Cha See was even inspired to ask herself: “Can you be Asian and not good at math?” Not that Davis has any answers—but she finds the asking just as important.

“I’m always thinking about that when I’m looking at representation and Black visual culture, and how the Black feminine is represented,” she says. “And I’m always just seeing like, ‘Okay, yes, these are all of these unconscious narratives and meanings that we need to make more explicit.’ A lot of people just are like, ‘I don’t want to deal, that’s just too much work. I don’t want to see it all in front of me. I just have this nice, you know, hazy bliss of ignorance.’ I haven’t had that ability to just push aside. I like to look at it, and I think it’s really useful. I think it’s part of the liberation practices that I am in.” She then adds, gently, with that warm smile that pops up very often in our conversations, “I’m interested in how we actually make our own lives better as a collective by paying attention to that.”

Eisa Davis and Lin-Manuel Miranda
Emilio Madrid

When asked about Warriors, Davis does note that there’s no set date for a stage premiere of the work (which saw her advocating for changing the all-male gang of the 1979 film to an all-female gang). This past summer also saw Davis and Miranda leading a silent disco where hundreds of people danced to the album at Lincoln Center.

“It’s a wild sort of juggling act to see how people are going to be able to sing and fight their way all through the Bronx in Manhattan,” she says. “We want to do it as quickly as we can, but we’re just not putting the pressure of having dates. We just want to make sure that we’re doing something that we think is solid and has integrity and is fun and surprising, that really pays homage to the film and the city of New York in the way that we wanted to.”

In the meantime, Davis is keeping plenty busy, creating work that, even though they require her to get deeply personal on the stage and dunk herself repeatedly in a tank of water—she hopes they will affect audiences just as deeply.

“Last night when you saw it, I was just like, ‘Oh my god, this piece is garbage!” she says with terror in her voice. But then, she smiles widely again, exclaiming, “At the same time, I’m like, but it’s my garbage! And it’s given with total love and respect for this whole lineage that I’m a part of, for everyone who’s given their energy and time and money to make this happen. And it’s just about this generosity of wanting to share something that I think is of use. It’s not designed to be a navel gaze. It’s really designed to be an investigation that everyone who comes to see it is part of and can take something away from it.”

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Photos: The Essentialisn’t Off-Broadway

The Essentialisn’t Off-Broadway HERE Arts Center Production Photos 2025 HR

Photos: The Essentialisn’t Off-Broadway

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The Essentialisn’t Off-Broadway HERE Arts Center Production Photos 2025 HR

The Essentialisn’t Off-Broadway HERE Arts Center Production Photos 2025 Eisa Davis HR