printable versionPulitzer finalist Bulrusher spotlights race, identity in the 1950s
Students Ariel Smith, left, and Taryn Peacock in Bulrusher
A baby is found floating in a basket on a Northern California river in the 1930s. Bulrusher, a multiracial orphan with a gift for clairvoyance, grows up in a predominantly white town that speaks the quirky, near-extinct Boontling, an English-based folk language that includes elements of Scottish Gaelic, Irish, Pomoan and Spanish. She is nevertheless a stranger even among the strange. Then, in 1955, a black girl from Alabama comes to town and shakes up her world.
Eisa Davis' Bulrusher – a collaboration between the Stanford Drama Department and Blackstage Theater Company, a student-oriented theater troupe focused on the black experience – will be performed at 8 p.m. Nov. 5, 6 and 7 at the Nitery Theater. Isaiah Wooden, a doctoral student in drama at Stanford, directs the play.
Bulrusher was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. The playwright, Bay Area native Eisa Davis, is a niece of activist Angela Davis.
Tickets for the show are $5 for students, $10 for seniors, faculty and staff, and $15 for general audiences. Call (650) 723-2576 or visit http://drama.stanford.edu for tickets.