Where has Eric Davis been? There was a time, only a few years ago, when he was turning up in one cabaret after the next at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center and turning in fine work for Stageworks and Gorilla Theatre, too. Then he seemed to disappear from Tampa Bay area theater altogether — until a few weeks ago, when he re-emerged as Milo Tindle, the cagey game-playing lothario in Anthony Shaffer's Sleuth. I arranged to meet Davis at American Stage, where his work as wily Milo had been so impressive. As we sat down in the cluttered upstairs rehearsal room, I got right to the question: Why haven't Bay area audiences seen him for so many months?
The answer: He's been at Disney World. About a year ago, Davis said, he originated the role of Gill in the stage musical Finding Nemo, playing at Disney's Animal Kingdom. Since then, he impersonated this eloquent fish 14 times a week to audiences of 2,000 (performing the show more than 750 times to crowds totaling over a million people.) And this was no thrown-together tourist attraction: The 40-minute show was adapted by the composer of Avenue Q, directed by the artistic director of the Minneapolis Children's Theatre and choreographed by the man who created the dance moves for Urinetown and the revival of Into the Woods. As Gill, Davis operated a puppet (worn onstage like a costume as in The Lion King), played several minor characters, helped throw the net that bagged Nemo and, as Gill again, sang.
"It's physically the most demanding show I've ever done," Davis said, adding that occasionally he filled in for an actor and operated a puppet that weighed 35 pounds. The show is still running — Davis left it to play in Sleuth — and "I have an offer to go back, and I'll go back until [my] next project, so who knows what that will be."
Nemo pays very well, he added, offering one of the best contracts in the nation to its actors. And Disney can be kind over the long haul too: One of Davis' colleagues has acted there for 25 years and has bought a home and raised a family on his acting income.
Davis, 33, has been an actor since childhood. He grew up in Reno, Nev., where he first performed in community theater and then moved on to juvenile roles at the professional Nevada Theatre Company (Michael Cristofer's The Shadow Box) and at the Nevada Opera (The King and I and other musicals). Exposure to theater in Ashland, Ore., when he was in middle school showed him "that people make a living doing this, and wow, this is exciting, and this is really what I want to do."
Davis attended Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, then worked in theaters across the West Coast. He was performing on a stage in Bakersfield, Calif., along with two friends from his Reno days, when he learned that both buddies had been hired by Disney in Orlando. "And I thought, 'Well, this whole Florida thing sounds interesting, it seems that there's a lot going on there, and you know, I might be able to get a job at Disney or there might be something else,'" he recalled "… So I said, 'Well, I'll just move out there, too, and we'll stay roommates.'"
The first job he landed after moving to Orlando in 1998, though, was in Tampa, in the Christmas Show at the Performing Arts Center. That led to the next TBPAC cabaret, Hollywood Nights, and a full three years of appearances in such musicals as Forever Plaid, Swing! Swing! Swing! and Televisions. He moved to Tampa in 1999 and eventually appeared in plays for Stageworks (giving terrific performances in Angels in America, Medea and The Turn of the Screw) and elsewhere.
From 2001 to 2006, he began supplementing his income by teaching musical theater at the Blake High School of the Performing Arts in Tampa. Including his work at Blake, Davis noted that "I have supported myself entirely on my earnings as an actor since I left college" — which certainly makes him a rarity among local thespians. One of his favorite activities at Blake was directing student musicals, and he hopes to make directing part of his professional life in coming years.
So why, if there's so much evidence of his talent, does he choose to live in Tampa rather than in New York or L.A.? He's discovered, he said, that it's possible to live in Florida and still audition in The Apple when a show looks interesting (his role in Nemo came from a New York audition). "I was considering moving to New York when I knew that I was leaving Blake," he pointed out. "But I looked at things and really figured it out, and I can fly to New York and back one or two times a week, and it's cheaper to live in Tampa in the home that I have than to move to New York and live in like a one-room apartment and just be auditioning for things."
He not only has the desire to direct, but to start his own theater company, one that would generate plays that would then move to New York. "I think that Tampa really in a way has the need for more companies, to kind of push things in different directions," he said. "You know, in theater I don't think it's about competition. I think theater begets theater, and the more that you have around, the more it pushes people to do different things and better things and pushes audiences to go see more."
But the prospect of his own company doesn't excite him because of any shortcomings in his present life; he made it clear that his work in recent years has been deeply satisfying. "The Nemo project was exciting and new and very high profile, and with these huge people working on it," he said. "And the Sleuth project has been great; it's a great play you know, that every male actor wants to do. … just the show you want to be in."
This article appears in Nov 28 – Dec 4, 2007.