Bulrusher (2024)

Based on the play by Eisa Davis

Cast
   BULRUSHER, a young woman of mixed race (Black, Native, white): soprano
   VERA, a young Southern Black woman: mezzo-soprano
   MADAME, a middle-aged white-identifying (also Native) woman: mezzo-soprano
   BOY, a young white man: tenor
   LOGGER (LUCAS JEANS), a middle-aged Southern Black man: baritone
   SCHOOLCH, a middle-aged white man: bass
   An Ensemble of five non-Black voices: SSATB

Synopsis
In 1955, in the redwood country north of San Francisco, a multiracial girl grows up in a predominantly white town whose residents pepper their speech with the historical dialect of Boontling. Found floating in a basket on the river as an infant, Bulrusher is an orphan with a gift for clairvoyance that makes her feel like a stranger even amongst the strange: the taciturn schoolteacher who adopted her, the madam who runs her brothel with a fierce discipline, the logger with a zest for horses and women, and the guitar-slinging boy who is after Bulrusher's heart. Just when she thought her world might close in on her, she discovers an entirely new sense of self when a black girl from Alabama comes to town.