Ramp / Mushroom

Eisa Davis

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English

53rd State Press
26 March 2025

Plays & playscripts; Black & Asian studies

In the plays collected here-Ramp and Mushroom-Pulitzer Prize finalist Eisa Davis mingles modes of myth and speculation, documentary and fiction in two plays about family, desire, restorative justice, ecological sustainability, and immigration amongst the working class. Ramp adapts the foundational Egyption saga of Isis / Osiris and sets on a near-future airline ramp, where siblings Isis, Osiris, Seth, and Nepthys throw luggage on planes and bicker about our thorny, precipitate futurity: should change be fast or gradual? Can the ecological revolution we require for survival produce ease and peace if it's rooted in violence? Is the path to utopia brutal? Must it be? Mushroom centers on the lives, loves, and working conditions of the Mexican and Central American mushroom-pickers in and around the town of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, where over 40% of all themushroomswe eat in this country come from.

Through a series of intersecting narrativestraversed by English, Spanish, K'iche' and Malayalam speakers, Mushroom considers a workplace dispute that has serious ramifications for multiple immigrant families, mapping howcompassion and justice might intersect.

By: Eisa Davis
Imprint: 53rd State Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 190mm, Width: 139mm,
ISBN: 9781737025535
ISBN 10: 1737025531
Pages: 225
Publication Date: 26 March 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

EisaDavisis an award-winning actor, writer, and singer-songwriter working on stage andscreen. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama for her play Bulrusher,and wrote and starred in Angela's Mixtape, and is creating a limited seriesbased on the memoir by Carlotta Walls LaNier, the youngest member of the LittleRock Nine. Eisa is a 2020 Creative Capital recipient. She was awarded theprestigious Herb Alpert Award in Theatre, and was a resident playwright at NewDramatists, where she won the Helen Merrill Award and the Whitfield Cook Award,among others. She has received fellowships from Sundance, Yaddo, the MacDowellColony, Cave Canem, and the Doris Duke, Van Lier and Mellon Foundations. As anactor, she is an Obie Award winner for Sustained Excellence in Performance.Eisa's recent work includes a microplay by Lynn Nottage in the virtual seriesTheatre For One, the role of June in the musical adaptation of The SecretLife of Bees (AUDELCO award, Lortel nomination), Kings at the Public(Drama League nomination), the 2017 Shakespeare in the Park production of JuliusCaesar, and Preludes created by Dave Malloy and Rachel Chavkin, forwhich she received her second Lucille Lortel nomination. Other theatreperformances includeAntigone in Fergusonat Yale Rep (also composer and music director), and theacclaimed Broadway rock musical Passing Strange, captured on film bySpike Lee. Current television work includes Betty, Bluff City Law, GodFriended Me, Rise, Condi Rice on The Looming Tower.