Bulrusher

By Eisa Davis

Directed by Marion McClinton

May 21 – June 14, 2008

Ages 16 and up

A finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Bulrusher is a coming-of-age story set in the isolated town of Boonville in the Redwood country north of San Francisco in 1955 where the residents have developed their own unique language to address subjects not considered socially acceptable. Abandoned on the river as an infant, a young African American woman, Bulrusher, develops the ability to read the future through water. But though she can see what will happen to others with painful accuracy, she remains a mystery to herself – until a stranger from Alabama arrives and opens her eyes to race, family and love.

Eisa Davis is a resident playwright at New Dramatists. 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, LAByrinth Theater Company, 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.

Marion McClinton returns to Pillsbury House Theatre following his critically acclaimed production of Home in the 2007 season. His Broadway productions include Drowning Crow, the revival of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and King Hedley II (Tony nomination). His Off-Broadway credits include Jitney (Obie and Lortel Awards), Roar, Talk and Breath, Boom.