Drama / 3m, 3f / Finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Drama 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. Passionate, lyrical, and chock full of down-home humor, this play is an unforgettable experience by a new, thrilling voice. " Davis] tickles the ears of her listeners...moving scenes on the banks of the pebble-strewn river...feel utterly true." - The New York Times "Davis explores her themes in unexpected and evocative ways ....The still waters of Bulrusher turn out to run pretty deep." - The San Francisco Chronicle ..".an engrossing rush...Eisa Davis' gleaming marriage of poetry and myth... has a big heart and a wide-open soul." - Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune "Mixing together issues of family, heritage, race and love, Eisa Davis' Bulrusher delivers a powerful impact with a poetic, deeply realized script and story. In the hands of director Marion McClinton...the work becomes transcendent." - TalkingBroadway.org "Bulrusher brims with profound lyrical passion...a poetic play with much nuance..." - NYTheatre.com "Davis has powers as a writer to find beauty in almost everything, and her play pulses with compassion and life. Bulrusher has the kind of satisfying, uplifting ending you can only find in live theater - vibrant, poetic, immediate and thrilling." - Bay Area News Group

'Post-black' refers to an emerging trend within black arts to find new and multiple expressions of blackness, unburdened by the social and cultural expectations of blackness of the past and moving beyond the conventional binary of black and white. Reflecting this multiplicity of perspectives, the plays in this collection explode the traditional ways of representing black families on the American stage, and create new means to consider the interplay of race, with questions of class, gender, and sexuality. They engage and critique current definitions of black and African-American identity, as well as previous limitations placed on what constitutes blackness and black theatre. Written by the emerging stars of American theatre such as Eisa Davis and Marcus Gardley, the plays explore themes as varied as family and individuality, alienation and gentrification, and reconciliation and belonging. They demonstrate a wide-range of formal and structural innovations for the American theatre, and reflect the important ways in which contemporary playwrights are expanding the American dramatic canon with new and diverse means of representation. Edited by two leading US scholars in black drama, Harry J. Elam Jr (Stanford) and Douglas A. Jones Jr (Princeton), this cutting edge anthology gathers together some of the most exciting new American plays, selected by a rigorous academic backbone and explored in depth by supporting critical material.

Jake Scott directs this indie drama starring James Gandolfini and Kristen Stewart. Middle-aged businessman Doug (Gandolfini) has led a life of quiet desperation since the death of his daughter eight years ago, and the subsequent withdrawal from life of his severely depressed wife, Lois (Melissa Leo). While attending a conference in New Orleans, Doug makes a fumbled attempt to heal his own broken heart by engaging with the problems of troubled teenage runaway Mallory (Stewart).