Any artistic director has to know more about theater than simply its administration: the job’s requirements can include acting, directing, designing, publicity, and not a little fund-raising. Well, Eric Davis this last season did it all: and he kept up the commitment to quality in productions that have made freeFall Theatre a place where the greatest of efforts and the finest of aesthetics are regularly combined to provide a first-rate experience. Consider the one-man Tempest that Davis offered last season: Who else would dare to play all the parts in Shakespeare’s play, and then pen a parallel work and intertwine it with the 17th-century original? Or consider the judgment that brought Bright Lights, Big City to St. Petersburg. Who would have guessed that a work so famously about the 1980s would resonate for audiences right now as this show did? Davis treats every show he produces as if it were a masterpiece — and even when he’s wrong, the audience benefits from his presumption. Keep doing what you’re doing, Eric.
