Eisa Davis’s The Essentialisn’t is a live conceptual performance work that asks the question: Can you be Black and not perform? Premiering at HERE Arts Center in New York City, the piece, written and performed by Davis, examines how essentialist ideologies work on the artist and us all—and the cultural techniques that make musical expression a kind of imprisonment, or a transcendent liberation.

Blending art gallery aesthetics and humor with an irresistible electronic soul score, The Essentialisn’t is a “search for the connections and the liberation that we can find within each moment, through the brilliant technologies that oppressed people in the African diaspora have relied upon over the last centuries.”

The Essentialisn’t was originally commissioned by Laura Kaminsky at Symphony Space with funding from the Virginia B Toulmin Foundation. The piece has been supported and developed by The Public Theater, The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, The Park Avenue Armory, Christopher Hibma at Sundance Theater Lab, New Georges, Performance Space New York, United States Artists Fellowship, Jack NY, and Creative Capital Foundation.