Nathan Alan Davis: A Long-Overdue Broadway Moment for a Versatile Playwright

Playwright and professor Nathan Alan Davis is experiencing a long-overdue moment of wide recognition in 2023, marked by a highly productive year of premieres. The 43-year-old dramatist has seen three world premieres already this year—The High Ground (Arena Stage, D.C., February), Eternal Life: Part 1 (Wilma Theater, Philadelphia, April), and Origin Story (Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Ohio, May)—all leading up to his most ambitious work yet.

The Epic Commitment: The Refuge Plays

Davis’s fourth major production of the year is The Refuge Plays, a three-part epic that begins previews on September 16 at the Laura Pels Theatre in New York. The scale of the production is noteworthy:

• Duration: The work spans 70 years of history, runs three-and-a-half hours (with two intermissions), and features a cast of 10 actors.

  
  

• Production: It is presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company in association with New York Theatre Workshop, representing a significant commitment by two major Off-Broadway organizations to an expansive play by a writer with limited previous New York exposure (Davis’s only prior NYC production was Nat Turner in Jerusalem in 2016).

This commitment speaks to the high regard in which Davis is held. Anna Morton Stacey, the production's dramaturg, noted that Davis's writing is "self-assured in all genres" and comes from a place of "confidence and curiosity."

An Accidental, Packed Year

Davis characterizes his busy year as a mix of chance and delays caused by COVID-19 catch-ups. For instance, The High Ground was initially scheduled for the 2020-21 season, and The Refuge Plays was set to premiere in May 2020 at McCarter Theatre Center.

He began working on The Refuge Plays eight years ago. What started as a one-act entitled Protect the Beautiful Place (now the title of Act I), developed during his post-master’s work at Juilliard, expanded into a trilogy at the urging of fellow students. Davis ultimately shaped the play to trace a Black family's history backwards in time: Act I is set in the present, Act II in the 1970s, and Act III in the 1950s.

The play centers on a Black family living a secluded, deliberate existence deep in the woods of southern Illinois, distant from modern society. The plot kicks off when the household's head, Gail, is visited by the ghost of her husband ("Walking Man"), who informs her she will die the next night. This pronouncement destabilizes their delicate existence, and later acts reveal how this secluded life began.

"You go from the fruit of this family to the root of this family," Davis explained, borrowing a line from cast member Daniel J. Watts. Davis, who grew up in Northern Illinois, drew "remnants" from his own Southern Illinois relatives, but the choice to place the action at a remove from society allowed for a broader study of what a Black family passes down through generations. The play creates an alternate reality to allow audiences to "step outside of the constant stream of action, information, [and] events," while remaining in conversation with the present.

The Throughline: Dreamlike Realities and Absurdism

Though his four plays this year are disparate in tone, style, and theme, a throughline can be found in their dreamlike quality—worlds just adjacent to our own. This "unconscious space" between reality and the absurd allows Davis to comment on the made-up rules humans impose on an arbitrary existence.

• The Refuge Plays: Features grounded reality touching on the "mystical, miraculous elements," as noted by director Patricia McGregor. Ghosts exist freely alongside the living, questioning the boundaries of the known and unknown.

  
  

• The High Ground: A Black soldier guards the site of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, visited by a young woman attempting to lure him away from death. The metatheatricality suggests frustrated performers trapped in cycles of violence.

  
  

• Eternal Life: Part 1: A science fiction piece set in an imagined future with a lifespan-extending potion. Features non-human characters, including a philosophical goose and debating snowflakes falling toward their doom.

  
  

• Origin Story: A comedy following a 30-something, Margaret, dealing with an increasingly bizarre world, where coworkers refer to paper jams as "Urgent Margaret" and a customer claims to be her long-lost mother.

Davis himself struggles to define a single artistic throughline, saying that audiences are seeing "a very different part of my subconscious with each play." Collaborators appreciate this versatility; director Morgan Green notes that Davis's work stems from a deeply intuitive realm rather than a deliberate theme.

Hope and Ancient Lineage

Davis, who is the head of the MFA Playwriting Program at Boston University (and previously taught at Princeton for seven years), approaches the future with cautious hope. He aims to connect his students to the "long, ancient lineage" of playwriting, reminding them they are carrying forward something precious.

Former student Emma Watkins praised Davis for creating an environment that valued taking time and paying close attention, setting aside the professional realities that might discourage writing something as ambitious as The Refuge Plays.

McGregor hopes the epic scope of The Refuge Plays will allow audiences to reflect on both history and the possibility of progress. While much contemporary theater focuses on "the center of the storm," McGregor feels Davis’s work offers a "pathway for what the other side might look like."

Davis ultimately views his work as an optimistic act: “Writing a play is inherently optimistic,” he said. “We have to write ourselves into whatever future we want.”