Talia Sulla (CFA’23) (left) and Jaden Bridges (CFA’25) rehearse a scene from Nathan Alan Davis’ Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea. Davis is head of BU’s playwriting program and College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of the practice of playwriting. The production, directed by Malika Oyetimein, College of Fine Arts School of Theatre lecturer, is running at CFA’s Studio ONE April 27 to 30. Photo by Will Chapman (COM’26)

Theatre

Nathan Alan Davis’ Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea Opens at CFA’s Studio ONE

Production celebrates playwright’s appointment as head of BU’s MFA playwriting program

Nathan Alan Davis has gotten comfortable traveling. He’s had to: as head of Boston University’s MFA in Playwriting Program, he’s stationed in Boston, but with one of his plays (Eternal Life Part 1) going up at the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, Davis needs to be there, too. 

That’s not all. In February, another of his plays, The High Ground, was running at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. In May, rehearsals will start for his play Origin Story at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. And, in the fall, New York City’s Tony Award–winning Roundabout Theatre Company—which has produced a number of on- and off-Broadway shows—will produce the world premiere of Davis’ trilogy, The Refuge Plays. 

So, it’s no surprise that when Davis calls to tell BU Today about the play that BU’s School of Theatre is producing, he’s on a train. 

“It’s really exciting,” Davis says of his in-demand oeuvre, “but it’s a lot! I am getting better at working on Amtrak, though.” 

Davis, who is also a College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of the practice of playwriting, joined the University last fall. In honor of his arrival and appointment, students in the College of Fine Arts School of Theatre are producing one of his most beloved plays, Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea. The four-day run opens on April 27 at CFA’s Studio ONE. 

“We are thrilled to have Nathan Alan Davis teach with us and create with us at BU,” says Susan E. Mickey, director of the School of Theatre and a CFA professor of costume design. “His work challenges, moves, and inspires us to be and do better. We embraced and welcomed this play into our season as a gesture of welcome and embrace for Nathan into our community. Being a student at BU means being around world-class artists. I hope the students will take advantage of the opportunity to see the work of one of today’s great playwrights.”

For Davis, seeing his work on its feet is an experience that “never gets old,” and one that he’s excited to cultivate for his playwriting students. 

“One of the reasons I love playwriting so much is that feeling of seeing your work embodied by actors and seeing an audience respond to it,” he says. “It’s thrilling, it’s exhilarating, it’s wonderful, and we try to give the writers at BU the opportunity to experience that, too. Writing is a solitary act, but theater is a very collaborative art form. So, the play that comes out is this combination of one’s own private thoughts with the artistic talent and creativity of your collaborators. It’s a really incredible thing.” 

Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea follows 18-year-old Dontrell Jones III, who decides that it is his duty and destiny to venture into the Atlantic Ocean in search of an ancestor lost during the Middle Passage—but his family is worried about losing their son to the treacherous sea. 

There’s a little bit of Davis’ own story in this play. Coming from an interracial family—his father is Black and his mother is white—Davis says there’s a lot of his own ancestry that’s been lost to time, intentionally or not. 

“There’s so much about my own family history that I don’t know, that I probably can’t know. But it doesn’t stop me from wanting to know it,” he says. 

That search motivates much of Davis’ work. His plays explore the dynamics of intergenerational family units, and he tends to “write things that deal with the Black experience in America,” Davis says. “I think my work is always grappling with history in some way or another.” Dontrell resonates with a lot of other people, too. When Davis met with the BU cast and crew early on in rehearsals, he says it was clear that they were “really personally connected to the play; they seemed inspired and happy to be working on it.”