Theatre in Review: The Essentialisn't (HERE) "Can you be Black and not perform?" That's an interesting question, especially since it is being asked onstage by Eisa Davis, who is playing -- what? Herself? A version of herself? A well-honed Eisa Davis persona? We're not even five minutes into The Essentialisn't and a question hangs in the air: Will the real Eisa Davis please stand up? Well, why not? Reams have been written about how Black people (and, I suppose, anyone of color), living in a white-dominated society, feel compelled to present carefully composed faces to the outside world. At one time, it was purely a matter of survival; now, it may be more about getting through the day without being insulted or patronized. Still, Davis is, I think, getting at something deeper and more troubling than mere code-switching: If you spend your entire life trying on masks, even out of necessity, how do you know who you are? When do you get to define your own identity? When does the role become you? As Davis notes, the question becomes infinitely more complicated when one performs for a living. Recalling her acting-school days, she discusses the role of the great Tennessee Williams heroine, Maggie, the Cat, who must performatively demonstrate a happy marriage if she is to retain her place in her husband's mendacity-riddled household. Contemplating the role -- one I dearly wish she'd tackle sometime -- she notes that the task for a Black actress, who necessarily must perform herself in daily life, is to portray a woman who must perform for those around her. And, of course, the work must be invisible: "Just don't perform while I'm performing," she says, repeating one of the top rules for students. Adding to the conundrum, she is told by her teachers, "We can't train you in Blackness. We're white. You'll have to do that for yourself." If you think about it, even for a minute, it's enough to make you want to lie down. This argument, which points to a crippling form of self-consciousness, is particularly confounding coming from Davis, a naturally captivating presence with a subtly expressive face and a formidable acting technique. Few performers seem more at home in front of an audience. If she struggles with such issues, how do others, with not even half her talent or skill, manage to cope? "Let me be clear, performance isn't the same as being enslaved," Davis notes -- reassuring news because, for a few moments early on in The Essentialisn't, you might wonder how far she intends to carry her point. (Then again, I once sat in on rehearsals for a regional theatre production during which the white director, who shall be nameless, explicitly compared the plight of American actors to that of Black antebellum slaves. The claim was made decades ago, but even then, it was a jaw-dropper.) Surely, the problem is bigger than any casting call, and in its initial stages, The Essentialisn't speaks eloquently to the dizzying challenge of being Black in a world where Blackness is constantly being redefined, and not by Black people. As Davis puts it, in one compact passage, the burdens of identity are equally crushing and confusing: "Civil war, emancipation! Reconstruction! Black Codes. Jim Crow. Souls of Black Folk. Uh oh. So now we can vote? Okay. Assassinate everybody, Moynihan Report. Welfare queen? Crackheads. I'm a lawyer from Oakland who laughs a lot, because I'm a vice president running for president! Oh! The civil war's not over? Oh! The South lost the war, but they won the narrative? Oh! The slaveholders are the victims? I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm...where's the narrative logic...." Where, indeed? At times, Davis explores this question pertinently and amusingly. Regarding the canard that all Black people are musical, she produces a video montage of many women (and a few men) massacring "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," Dreamgirls' big take-home number. (The audience gets in on it, too, raising a racket that sounds like souls in torment.) Davis and her "Sovereigns," a pair of young assistants, pull cards from a box, each with an identifying word applied to Black women. ("Traitor. Martyr. Extreme. Articulate. Inarticulate. Rule follower. Rebel.") The list is endless and self-canceling in its endless contradictions. But even as she struggles with essentialism, defined as "the view that every entity has a set of attributes that are necessary to its identity and function," or, as she puts it, "that someone knows you or thinks they do...that they can know you before they even know you," Davis seems to retreat into herself, leaving us wondering who she really is. The piece is filled with repetitive verbal and musical motifs. Rather than pursuing her line of thought, its energy runs down as she continues to restate her initial point, often in cryptic ways. She also spends an inordinate amount of time in a vertical water tank, a decision that had me thinking about Esther Williams more than I would have liked. Especially in the later passages, she seems to slip into a reverie that excludes the audience. Intelligibility is also a challenge: At times, she and her sovereigns (Jamella Cross and Princess Jacob) are drowned out by recorded music. I wonder if Davis' decision to act as her own director was in her best interests; another, more critical eye might have given this piece a stronger, more consistently engaging profile. Anyway, Peter Born's sleek, simple set is filled with arresting imagery (of ocean waves, flowers, and sunlight breaking through trees) by Skye Mahaffie. And, at the performance I attended, the Black women in the audience seemed totally in sync with everything happening onstage. Clearly, Davis is speaking directly to their experience, and they have cracked the code of her writing. Indeed, watching The Essentialisn't, I couldn't help recalling one of her breakthrough roles, in the musical Passing Strange, about a young Black man, in flight from his despised bourgeois upbringing, running around Europe, trying to craft a new identity for himself, as a Black man and an artist, while being treated as a novelty item by his chic, bohemian friends. The question of how to be Black has seemingly provided Davis' work with a sturdy throughline. In this case, the theory is more interesting than the execution, and her ideas are sometimes hard to make out. --David Barbour 
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