Angela’s Mixtape

Using the rhythms of music and memory, in Angela’s Mixtape, playwright/performer Eisa Davis tells the story of a radical upbringing on the dividing line between Oakland and Berkeley, California–in a family that includes her aunt, professor and activist Angela Davis.

Time shifts between the 70s, 80s, and 90s as smoothly as a DJ fading from song to song. Each track, each memory, has a built-in switch to the next, for theatrical momentum that keeps on
building. Crossing cultural borders as it scratches through time, the play moves from Angela’s hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, to the House of Detention where she was once held prisoner, to the playgrounds of Eisa’s Bay Area public schools, the dorm rooms of the Ivy League and the shores of Senegal.

The music crosses styles and decades, but it’s hip-hop and a b-girl stance that keeps the piece bouncing in the present. It’s just your average black macrobiotic revolutionary dancing family.