Rick Davis

Dean, College of Visual and Performing Arts

Rick joined Mason in 1991 as Artistic Director of Theater of the First Amendment (TFA) and a member of the theater faculty. The company, which presented its final programs in 2012, was nominated for 38 Helen Hayes Awards, winning 12, and originated numerous works that went on to other regional theaters, television, radio, recordings, and publication.

Prior to coming to Mason, Rick was Resident Dramaturg and Associate Artistic Director of Baltimore's Center Stage (1986-91), Associate Director and co-founder of the American Ibsen Theater in Pittsburgh (1983-85), and taught drama at Washington College.

Rick has directed a broad range of professional theater and opera productions (more than 40 to date) in venues such as Center Stage, TFA, the Kennedy Center, American Ibsen Theater, Unseam'd Shakespeare Company, Players Theatre Columbus, Delaware Theatre Company, Lake George Opera (NY), Opera Idaho, Washington, D.C.'s IN Series, and other companies. He also has worked as dramaturg on more than 30 professional productions and has directed dozens of plays, musicals, and operas for college and university programs, including Mason Opera and the Mason Players.

From 2007 to 2011, Rick served as Mason's Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education, working primarily on issues of general and liberal education, international programs, and student academic life. The assessment protocol that he co-developed with Mason’s Office of Institutional Research and Reporting was honored with the “Exemplary Program Award” in 2011 by the Association of General and Liberal Studies.

As Executive Director of the Hylton Performing Arts Center since August 2011, Rick Davis oversees a state-of-the-art venue presenting national and international touring artists and serving as home to several resident arts organizations, as well as providing a major resource for Mason students and faculty, community, educational, business, civic, and social events.

In May 2015, Rick was appointed Dean of the College of Visual and Performing Arts. In this capacity, he oversees the college’s seven academic programs, its creative, research, and community arts education arms, and its many performance and exhibition venues. He continues to teach in the School of Theater and for Mason’s Honors College, as well as working on various directing and writing projects on and off campus.

Rick's four books include Calderón de la Barca: Four Great Plays of the Golden Age; his co-translations of Ibsen with Brian Johnston (Ibsen: Four Major Plays, vol. I), which have been performed at leading regional theaters across the country; Ibsen in an Hour (with Brian Johnston); and Writing About Theatre (with Christopher Thaiss). His translation of Calderón’s The Phantom Lady was awarded the Franklin Smith Prize for Comedia Translation in 2019 by the Association for Hispanic Classical Theatre.

With composer Kim D. Sherman, he is the librettist for an opera, Love's Comedy, and an oratorio, The Songbird and the Eagle, commissioned and premiered by the San Jose Chamber Orchestra. He wrote the libretto for a song cycle based on the life of Father Mychal Judge, “Stations of Mychal,” with composer Kevin Salfen. The work premiered in New York City on September 10 and 11, 2021, as part of the commemorations of the 20^th anniversary of 9/11, and is now available through Centaur Records. 

Rick has won the George Mason Teaching Excellence Award (1997) and was named an Alumni Association Distinguished Faculty Member of the Year (2006). In 2024 he received the Gertrude Breithaupt Jupp Award for Distinguished Service from his undergraduate alma mater, Lawrence University. He went on to the Yale School of Drama for his MFA and DFA.

Degrees:

• DFA, Yale School of Drama, CT
• MFA, Yale School of Drama, CT