We recently connected with E.M. Davis and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, E.M. thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.
When I decided that I wanted to pursue acting as a professional occupation, nearly every adult in my life told me not to. My father worried about the financial risk. My mother was concerned about the profession’s unpredictability. And my high school drama teacher (my first real mentor) just blatantly told me to find a back-up plan, mere days after I’d hopped into our annual musical as a last-minute lead to save a key performance from cancellation. When all of the grownups around you say to take a different path, it’s hard to unhear. So, against my own instincts, I attend college to pursue a theatre education degree instead.
It probably won’t shock you to hear that I was miserable. I experienced bouts of depression unlike any I’d encountered before; at first, I thought they were a result of being away from home for the first time, but as college continued, I realized that the acting itch simply was not going away. I had to come up with a plan. And I did.
College being as expensive as it already is, I chose to stay the course and complete my current degree. But with every bit of spare time I had between my teaching coursework, I began to involve myself in as many performance opportunities as I could qualify for. The fall of my senior year, I auditioned for a mainstage production, and was cast! Recognizing the numerous directing-major thesis projects were in need of actors, I happily raised my hand and participated in those too – all while simultaneously juggling the increased workload from my teaching practicum.
I never worked harder than I did in that final year of school – and also had never felt more alive, more invigorated and with a fuller sense of purpose. In 2011, I graduated with a Theatre Education degree but – rather than complete the final step post-graduation necessary to receive my teaching license – I took a giant risk and moved to Chicago to pursue an acting career instead. My 22-year-old self knew that, if I had finalized my license, that would’ve been the end. I would have stopped my acting pursuits altogether, in exchange for a more steady job that I had the skills for but not the passion. And while I shake my head at my younger self sometimes for the boldness of that decision, I recognize that taking that absurd risk all those years ago is the key reason that my acting career has continued on the path that it is today.
E.M., love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My name is E.M. Davis, I use they/them pronouns, and I am a trans/non-binary actor, writer, and producer who currently resides in Chicago. I grew up in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, as the oldest of four children. I would have characterized myself more as a “sports kid” growing up, as I was heavily involved in soccer and basketball for a number of years. While I did perform in the middle-school musicals, I didn’t really start diving headlong into theatre and acting until halfway through high school. I was drawn to the idea of melting away into a character and living in someone else’s experience. The human psyche and how each individual decision we make impacts the next moment was incredibly fascinating to me, and being able to bring that to the stage and an audience made me truly fall in love with acting. I think a lot of it also had to do with the fact that I was feeling so uncomfortable in my own body (helloooo being trans!) that being able to more easily pretend to be someone else drew me into acting as well.
I still remember the moment that I realized the pull that the arts were having on me was different from what my theatre and choir friends were experiencing. They were having fun in the high school productions, sure, but they were always discussing it as more of a hobby. As they became more focused on SATs, being accepted into top-ranking colleges, and preparing for careers in the fields of law and medicine, I was dreaming more and more of a life as an artist.
Fast-forward to now – I recently finished my tenure as Artistic Director of Broken Nose Theatre. After eight years with the company as a staff and ensemble member, I am now using the time that I gained back to refocus on myself and my craft.
The way the pandemic forced our industry to pause, and our endlessly busy lives to slow down, allowed me the opportunity to take a giant step back and recognize through self-reflection the things in my life (personally and professionally) that I had chosen to ignore. It was only then that I took the time to acknowledge what my mind and body had been telling me for most of my life – that I was trans/non-binary. Realizing that my current workload and mindset was stifling this much-needed conversation with myself, I started to reconstruct my work/life balance in a way that gave me the space to confront these thoughts more readily. Becoming comfortable with myself in this newfound identity, and knowing where I needed to start placing my time and energy, was a giant shift in my life.
Going through my current transition with a husband – and only a year into our marriage – was also a huge undertaking for us. But now, having traversed it together, we could not be stronger, as he stood by my side through all the adjustments I made in my life: everything from a haircut and changing my stage name, to adopting new pronouns and, most recently, undergoing top surgery.
Now that my body is starting to truly reflect what I have always felt internally, I am sensing a brand-new rush of energy to work on my craft and push my career to the next level. I have been incredibly grateful to have booked both a television series co-star and commercial campaign in which my identity as a trans/non-binary individual was part of the character description. While my love for theatre will forever be there, I am manifesting and working towards consistent on-camera work moving forward. Cinema has always felt like my truest destination, even from an early age when I would go to the movie theatre in town. And while I’m continuing to audition, I am also beginning to explore the producing side of filmmaking. Short films, for example, continue to be a thrilling concept to me, and I’m continuing to germinate a slate of projects fueled by the small bursts of creative freedom that these more constrained yet hyper-focused narratives provide.
And yet, despite it all being scary and new and worrisome and thrilling, I have never felt such a calm sense of purpose. More than ever before, I know full well who I am and where I want to go, and the stories I want to tell have become even clearer and more defined. I’m beyond excited to now have the chance to explore characters whose experiences represent my own.
The magical place of L.A. is definitely starting to call my name, and I believe I will be answering that call sometime next year. I am very excited to be starting this new, post-top surgery chapter in my life – getting my strength back, and being able to dive into and focus solely on my career. And with some additional newfound free time, I also look forward to snuggling up on the couch and catching up on a shelf’s worth of books that have been giving me the stank eye for years.
Cheers to choosing yourself, listening to your needs, and then putting forth a plan to make it happen!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I think there’s always been an enormous stigma against the idea of choosing yourself. I have certainly struggled with it, always placing it in the category of being selfish and imbuing it with a negative connotation, rather than acknowledging the positive impact it can have. It’s not been until recently that I’ve actually decided to choose myself unashamedly.
There’s a reason why, on airplanes, we’re always instructed to place our oxygen masks on first before helping others. If you’re unable to ensure your own well-being, you’re far less likely to be in a position to assist those around you.
As someone who identifies both as an “August Leo” and a people-pleaser, my life’s always been a balancing act between polar opposite tendencies. Coming from parents – one of which has undiagnosed ADHD and the other is incredibly organized and thorough – I’ve always called myself “organized chaos.” My room may have not always been clean growing up, but if you needed to find one particular piece of paper, I knew exactly which pile to pull it from.
For most of my adult life, I’ve made it a habit of ensuring that others were comfortable, sometimes at the expense of myself, knowing I could take the hits when they came. And that is where I think my deep burial of my trans/non-binary identity stemmed from – I knew it was something I needed, but I immediately leapt to worrying about how it would affect everyone else. It wasn’t until the pandemic, when I was unable to avoid those thoughts about my truest self, that I stopped putting others’ comfort above my own.
Even now, I still on occasion feel those voices creeping in; I’ve just gotten better at quieting those self-doubts. Trust me, I know that choosing what’s best for you can be scary, but take it from me: It’s absolutely worth it. I’ve not felt this kind of cliff-dive thrill in years, and I am excited to see where this next chapter in my life takes me.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
As an incredibly ambitious college graduate, the internet and library became my best friends, as the acting training that I missed out on while majoring in Theatre Education was supplemented by the resources that were either free or within my limited budget. I remember reading somewhere that if you felt you did not have an acting mentor, then make every book, article, or online program you come across your personal mentor and take that moment to self-teach.
And that’s what I did for a while. Whether it was books on performance techniques, or the memoirs of actors I aspired to be in rooms with, I created a long list of titles and devoured every single one I could get my hands on. Similarly, I wrote out a list of Oscar-nominated films, or Tony-nominated plays, and subsequently would check them out one-by-one. There wasn’t a day I got home from a (sometimes exhausting) serving shift that I didn’t pop in another DVD or crack open another script.
The idea of being a lifelong learner has always been a staple of mine, and my inability to focus on continued learning as much as I would’ve liked these past few years hadn’t been sitting well with me. But recently, I’ve found myself with the time to restart this journey. I’m re-engaging with these same resources and – in utilizing them – reinvesting in myself and my craft. And even better: The wealth of material at our fingertips has never been so vast and accessible. There are never-ending networks of podcasts that specifically revolve around the industry. There are dozens of platforms, containing more films and television shows than you could watch in ten lifetimes. When a physical copy of a book is impossible to track down, hold tight, because the digital version is almost certainly available to rent or purchase. Now more than ever, we as artists and individuals have control over who we’d like our next “mentor” to be in a way that we never imagined possible.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://emdavis.me/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emdavischi/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/e-m-davis/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsvxQkMeB7X0CW8dC6TmfBA/featured
Image Credits
Tyler Core and Spenser Davis