Podcast Summary

All Of It, WNYC

Episode: Eisa Davis's Performance About Performance
Host: Alison Stewart
Guest: Eisa Davis, Pulitzer Prize finalist, playwright, composer, and performer
Original Airdate: September 16, 2025

Episode Overview

In this episode, Alison Stewart sits down with multitalented artist Eisa Davis to discuss her latest performance piece, "The Essential Isn't", currently running at HERE Arts Center. Davis explores the central question: "Can you be Black and not perform?"—interrogating the boundaries between identity, expectation, obligation, and performance through an immersive blend of music, dance, audience participation, and conceptual theater.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Concept Behind "The Essential Isn't"

• Challenging Essentialism:

  • Davis describes the show’s title as a play on essentialism:

    “It's getting at this philosophical concept of essentialism, right, which pretty much says that people of distinct categories, gender, sexual orientation, racial categories...are defined by a particular essence that makes them separate from everyone else who is human. So this is really about challenging that question.” (01:46)

  • The title’s intentionally awkward spelling emphasizes resistance to categorization.

• Personal and Artistic Expectations:

  • Davis frames the work around the cultural and societal performances expected of a “Cishet, Black femme body,” both in daily life and onstage.
  • The transition from a traditional narrative to a conceptual piece mirrors her own evolution as an artist inhabiting, rather than simply writing, the character.

2. Evolution from Musical to Conceptual Art

• Origins as a Musical:

  • Initially commissioned as a chamber musical about a conceptual artist and her gallery milieu (03:01).
  • Inspired by contemporary artists like Carrie Mae Weems and Lorraine O'Grady.
  • The format changed in response to life events and societal shifts, eschewing character for direct personal exploration.

• Performance Structure:

  • The show now involves multimedia elements, songs, unscripted interactions, and a shifting relationship with the audience.

3. The Lobby Video and Pre-Show Experience

• Black Excellence & Expectation:

  • A looping video in the theater lobby displays historic Black performers like Hazel Scott and Dorothy Dandridge, juxtaposed with a mobile of books overhead.
  • The intention is to “release a performing black woman's body from those expectations,” illustrating how Black women are expected to leap over ever-higher hurdles of excellence (04:48).

• Inviting Relaxation:

  • The contrast between virtuosity on screen and the possibility of simply “having a slumber party, you know what I mean? And just being relaxed” inside the theater (05:41).

4. The Book Mobile & Intellectual Context

• Syllabus as Installation:

  • Hanging books offer a personal and cultural reading list, central to the piece’s message:

    • Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

      “The water tank is representing this transatlantic crossing...the idea is about this undrowning, this way in which...you become a dolphin and literally jump off of a slave ship and live in that way." (06:29)

    • Lose Your Mother by Saidiya Hartman
      — Examines the myth of “homecoming” on the African continent and reconceptualizes the Middle Passage as a rite of passage (07:35).
    • Black and Blur by Fred Moten
      — A reference for avant-garde approaches to Black performance and identity (09:30).
    • Angela’s Mixtape by Eisa Davis
      — A memoir/play about growing up in a radical activist family and navigating inherited obligations (09:54).

  • “...moving from the question of this very particular family with a global legacy. But then now I'm thinking about obligation to sort of black womanhood and where those requirements come from.” (10:54)

5. Tap Shoes and Dance as Symbol

• Why Tap?

  • Tap shoes featured in the installation reference both the stereotype of Black performance for white audiences and tap as pure liberation:

    “They hold this weight of the way that we're expected to perform in a white supremacist ideology. And they are the symbol of pure liberation for me, of dance as music, of this rhythmic power that we as black cultural practitioners have.” (11:40)

• Tap as Expression:

  • Alison observes that tap can convey anger, resistance, and “performing something else” beyond pleasure or entertainment (12:50).

6. The Central Question: Can You Be Black and Not Perform?

• Origins of the Question:

  • Stemming from a graduate acting exercise, Davis reflects on the impossibility of “non-performance” as a Black artist:

    “Can I be in non performance on stage? Does that violate all of the history that I have as a performer?...So in a way, it came to me as just a form of finding liberation on stage and really embracing performance for the freedom that it can provide, as opposed to...this kind of pressure and oppression.” (15:02)

• Performance as Burden and Freedom:

  • The show pushes against layers of respectability, labor, and internalized external expectations for Black women and performers.
  • Audience participation—like singing Dreamgirls’ “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going”—offers catharsis by inviting imperfection and release (24:13).

7. Set Design and Embodied Metaphors

• The Water Tank:

  • Davis performs atop and within a large water tank—a powerful allusion to ancestry, danger, memory, and rebirth:

    “The water is...this mother. It's also this place of loss and this place of memory. And I feel it both hold me...that's very warm and wonderful. And then it also feels like...this terrible, dangerous, frightening place that symbolizes death as well.” (18:56)

  • Actual rehearsal with the tank was minimal:

    “I just kept talking like, okay, so do I put my foot here? Do I put my knee here?...And finally just had to do it...And what was really phenomenal was that first time when I was just so, so, so scared to get in. Once I did, I was like, oh my gosh, I just want to stay in here forever.” (20:37, 21:49)

8. The Sovereigns: Intergenerational Presence on Stage

• Introducing the ‘Sovereigns’:

  • Two young actors, Princess Jacob and Jamella Cross (“Jam”), embody sovereignty and intergenerational dialogue.

    “They have total sovereignty over their body, over the stage. They don't care if you're there watching them...they're both ancestral guides. And they're also just very contemporary, you know, in their sweatsuits.” (21:53)

• Intentional Age Gap:

  • Davis notes she wanted younger performers to add perspective and “teach me their form of sovereignty” (23:08).

9. Music and Audience Participation

• Songwriting Process:

  • Many songs were written in the early 2010s, with lyrics evolving to match the shifting themes of the show.

    “The songs actually are the things that have sort of remained the constant. The scaffolding around them has changed a lot. But the songs...what keeps changing in them are the lyrics.” (23:36)

• Community Singing as Release:

  • The audience is prompted to “sing a song badly” ("And I Am Telling You"), subverting expectations of perfection and offering liberation from constant labor:

    “What does it take from you when you're giving that much? And is that also what we're asking of Black women all the time, is to work that hard. So just to be able to sing that badly, to have the release of not having to work, you know...” (24:33)

10. Audience Impact & Response

• Emotional Reception:
  • Audience members regularly approach Davis in tears, moved by the show’s intimacy.

    “Jam and Princess and I left the stage. We heard the audience singing that final song, like, just kept singing it. Kept singing it.” (25:57)

11. Brief Glimpse: "Warriors" Silent Disco

• Creative Fulfillment:
  • Davis reflects on seeing the "Warriors" concept album (with Lin-Manuel Miranda) come alive at a Lincoln Center silent disco.

    “It really allowed us to see, like, what are those moments where people are just going for it, singing it, you know, screaming. What are the parts where people are really singing along? And so I think it was really helpful for us. It was almost like a little workshop where we got to have a blast.” (27:03)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Essentialism and Identity:
  “I'm just playing with that as a question.” (01:46, Eisa Davis)

• On Black Women’s Expectations:
  “We're expected to be far beyond what excellence is. We have to be, you know, a trillion times more excellent.” (04:48, Eisa Davis)

• On Tap as Liberation and Burden:
  “Tap shoes...hold this weight of the way that we're expected to perform in a white supremacist ideology. And they are the symbol of pure liberation for me.” (11:40, Eisa Davis)

• On Water and Ancestry:
  “The water is...this mother. It's also this place of loss and this place of memory. And I feel it both hold me in this very embracing way that's very warm and wonderful. And then it also feels like...this terrible, dangerous, frightening place that symbolizes death as well.” (18:56, Eisa Davis)

• On Collective Release:
  “Just to be able to sing that badly, to have the release of not having to work.” (24:33, Eisa Davis)

• On Audience Impact:
  “We heard the audience singing that final song, like, just kept singing it.” (25:57, Eisa Davis)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• Explaining the title & essentialism: 01:46
• Original concept vs evolution: 03:01
• Lobby video, Black excellence, Hazel Scott: 04:48
• The book mobile & Black feminist texts: 06:29
• Angela’s Mixtape & family legacy: 09:54
• Tap shoes as symbol: 11:40
• Central question: can you be Black and not perform?: 15:02
• Performing in/with the water tank: 18:56
• The Sovereigns & generational presence: 21:53
• Songwriting process and audience singalong: 23:36-24:33
• Emotional audience reactions: 25:57
• "Warriors" silent disco & creative fulfillment: 27:03

Tone & Language

The conversation is soulful, intellectual, playful, and frequently intimate. Davis mixes philosophical inquiry with personal storytelling, offering vulnerability and hope while interrogating the rigor and resonance of Black performance.

For New Listeners

This episode provides a multifaceted look at what it means to “perform” Blackness on stage and in life. Davis’s project is both a deconstruction and a celebration: it invites all to grapple with histories, tap into discomfort, release perfection, and find liberation in self-expression—sometimes, by simply being.

"The Essential Isn't" runs at HERE Arts Center through September 28th, 2025.