Robert H. Davis, Professor of Theatre, is a Designated Linklater Voice Teacher with more than 35 years of experience as a professional actor, director and voice/dialect coach. He earned the Bachelor of Arts in Drama from Kenyon College and the Master of Fine Arts in Acting from Ohio University.
Davis has worked with regional theatres across the country including Hartford Stage, Shakespeare & Company, Yale Repertory Theatre, Goodspeed Musicals, Theater Works of Hartford, Colorado Shakespeare Festival, the Shakespeare Festival at Tulane, Monomoy Theatre on Cape Cod and Swine Palace Productions in Louisiana. He received a Connecticut Critics Circle Award for his performance in The Exonerated at Theater Works of Hartford and has appeared regularly at Hartford Stage in productions of Romeo and Juliet, Kiss Me Kate, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Christmas Carol, Our Town (sharing the role of the Stage Manager with Hal Holbrook). He has also played several roles in the Brand:New play festival and many staged readings including Stuff Happens and Horton Foote's Shape of River with Kate Mulgrew. Once upon a time he appeared on television's Sesame Street as the Rhythm Chef.
An award-winning teacher, Davis has been a project director for the National Endowment for the Humanities and a senior faculty member for the NEH National Institute on Teaching Shakespeare. He has served on the teaching faculty at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass where he taught in professional training workshops and education programs funded by the NEH, NEA and Massachusetts Cultural Council. He served as a consultant for Prospero, LLC, a management consulting company that delivered workshops in leadership, communication and presentation skills to major corporations. He has also been a guest faculty member at Trinity College, Wesleyan University, the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Theatre Institute and the education program at Goodspeed Musicals. In New York, he was a member of Joanne Woodward's Actor's Group of New York and appeared with the Shadowfax Theatre Company.
Prior to his appointment at The Hartt School, Davis was on the faculty of Louisiana State University's Department of Theatre where he taught in the M.F.A. Acting Program and served as Associate Department Chair. While at LSU He created the BellSouth Institute on Teaching Shakespeare and received two University awards for excellence in teaching.
At the University of Hartford, Davis has served as Associate Dean of The Hartt School and Director of The Hartt School Theatre Division. He received the University of Hartford's Bent Award for Scholarly and Artistic Creativity.