As the cofounder and artistic director of freeFall Theatre in St. Pete, founded in 2008, it’s about time Eric Davis receives the MUSE Award for Performing Arts. freeFall has been in their current location (a former Christian Science church on Central) since 2011, and we’re lucky he hasn’t ran off to a bigger city.
“I moved to St. Petersburg when the theatre moved to its current home on Central Avenue. freeFall is what keeps me from moving elsewhere. As long as St. Petersburg's capacity to support the organization grows to a sustainable level, it is likely that freeFall will stay here,” Davis explains. “I would say that as a relatively young organization, each consecutive year stands out from the last because of incremental growth. Every year we see larger audiences than the year before.”
The performing arts are powerful in that there is more than enough potential to change people’s lives.
“Theatre is an exercise in empathy, for both the artists and the audience. Empathy is certainly something we could use a lot more of,” he says.
Amen to that. As for what we can expect in 2017:
“We have three more productions coming up in our 16/17 season: Red Velvet, about the first black actor to play Othello on the London stage; End of the Rainbow, about Judy Garland near the end of her life; and Marie Antoinette, David Adjmi's stunning, anachronistic play about our obsession with lifting people to celebrity only to destroy them. We also have expanded educational opportunities for kids and adults that are enrolling now and start in mid-January,” he says. “We are very excited to offer these new opportunities for both youth and adults to learn more about theatre from freeFall's perspective.”
Davis wears many hats on and behind stage, and has won numerous awards for best acting, direction, set design, and costume design. What is the most rewarding role?
“What I find fulfilling is making good theatre,” he says.
This article appears in Jan 12-19, 2017.