An Epic Chat with Composer and TikTok Star Scott Evan Davis

Scott Evan Davis is a New York City-based composer/lyricist and social media influencer best known for his sarcastic coffee drinking persona on TikTok, the Prince of Snarkness.

After working as an actor around the country, Davis began composing in 2010 and immediately gained widespread recognition in the worlds of musical theatre and cabaret. Currently, he is working with EPIC Players, a neurodiverse professional theatre company, as the musical director of their fall show, EPIC: Villains: A Wickedly Inclusive Cabaret. The theatre company is a nonprofit that was founded five years ago to provide opportunities for performers with developmental disabilities to represent themselves on stage and screen.

EPIC: Villains: A Wickedly Inclusive Cabaret will be presented at the iconic Joe’s Pub at The Public Theatre and will take place October 24-25.

Additionally, Davis recently released his debut pop single “Falling Everyday,” which focuses on his personal struggles with imposter syndrome, and he is developing his first full-length musical called Indigo.

OFM caught up with Davis to talk more about his current and upcoming projects, working with autistic individuals, and how he became the Prince of Snarkness on TikTok.

I would like to begin talking more about your upcoming project with Epic Players. You are the musical director for their fall show, EPIC: Villains: A Wickedly Inclusive Cabaret. What can audiences expect?
I am hosting the event, and it is a themed cabaret basically about all different sorts of villains. The players have chosen songs, or we’ve chosen songs, where they sort of embody those villains and take us through the night looking at different perspectives of what makes people mean.

Will the show be available to stream after its run or is it in-person only?
It’s in-person only, but I don’t know if the producers will have it available afterwards. That’s a question. We are including some virtual collaborations, and we have players from all over the country, so we are editing together some virtual stuff, but I don’t know if it will be available to stream. Certainly not live in the moment, which is October 24-25.

What are you looking forward to the most about this production?
This is going to be the first production that the players have had in person in two years. We did a weekend at Lincoln Center a couple of weeks ago, which was great, and that was outside, but this is the first in a while where it will be like, “OK, we have a dressing room; we’re in a space, and we’ll have people in the same room as us while we’re singing.” Personally, that is what I am most excited about.

How were you coping during the Broadway shutdown?
How I was coping is different than how, let’s say, EPIC was coping. In my own personal life, I switched to virtual coaching, virtual collaborations, and sort of started TikTok. I did all these things during the pandemic, and then as far as EPIC, they didn’t really miss a beat. I remember, we all went inside March 13, and about three days later, everything got cancelled and went virtual, and they didn’t miss a week.

Everything just went virtual, and the weird thing is, it opened up a door to a whole new group of people that don’t live in New York. We were able to include them virtually, and now we are trying to figure out the balance of how we can still integrate them into each performance. I am so proud of EPIC because they never once faltered. It was like, “Oh, we’re inside now? OK, this is what we are going to do.” It was amazing and kind of seamless.

EPIC Players is a nonprofit that provides opportunities for performers with developmental disabilities to represent themselves on stage and screen. How did you initially get involved with this organization?
I have been working with the autistic community since around 2010, and I was hired to work with 10 autistic students down in the Lower East Side. They wanted to write a musical, so I was hired as a composer, and I came in and wrote a show with them. I wrote a song called “If the World Only Knew,” which was their opening number, and then after that show was over, it went on to sort of have its own life and it has completely changed my career.

I have written a full musical called Indigo, and it’s about a nonverbal, autistic girl and a grandmother with dementia. The show has Broadway producers attached to it, so we were doing several readings, and right before the last reading we did before the pandemic, we heard that EPIC Players was doing a performance of Little Shop of Horrors at The Sheen Center. We went to see it as a team, loved what they did, and that is where I sort of introduced myself to Aubrie Therrien. She is the founder of EPIC Players, and two days later, we had coffee and she came to see a reading of Indigo. Now, I am the resident musical director at EPIC Players, and we are sort of working in tandem. It is the best job I have ever had.

Are there any updates about Indigo you would like to tell us?
We were on hold because of the pandemic. The next step was to do an out-of-town production, and of course, everything stopped, but I did just find out a couple days ago that a theater in Ohio is going to be producing it next season. So, that is up and running, and I am very grateful about that!

How meaningful has it been for you to work with autistic individuals?
It’s hard to answer a question like that only because what it means to me is, I just got to meet some incredible humans and got to do some great theatre. I am getting to make friends, and I have learned a lot about myself. I have learned a lot about not only how I communicate, but how we all communicate. It has opened up my mind, in a short answer, on all of the different ways we as humans communicate, and sometimes, it’s not about getting someone to understand you, but it’s getting you to understand how they need you to talk to them. I have been exposed to a different way of thinking, and it has informed my personal life, my career, and my writing.

I said this the other day to a friend of mine because they asked me a question just like that. All I can think about is this. I have been doing theatre, writing, and performing for years. Music has always been what I kind of did there, but something happens to you the older you get where what you love, what you have passion for, and what your career is becomes work. That is not a bad thing, but it happens. Working with this community, specifically what EPIC Players has done for me, when I show up to rehearsal, it doesn’t feel like I’m just going to another rehearsal. Like, I’m just going to spend a couple hours here, go home, and have dinner.

The passion, enjoyment, hope, energy, and excitement that they have for theatre is exactly how I felt when I was younger and first finding theatre. They bring that to every rehearsal, and there is no way I can go to rehearsal feeling like I just need to get through the next couple hours because it’s work. Those feelings are why I love this, and I have those moments at every rehearsal.

That motivates and drives your creativity.
Yes, 100 percent. I am very grateful to work in a lot of things that I am doing, and I am grateful to have made the connections and friends that I have. They are very important to me.

You have a couple studio albums out, and you recently released a new pop single called “Falling Everyday.” How has it been received by listeners?
Good! I do this thing on TikTok where I go live every morning for an hour, and I sort of do my own show where I have coffee, talk with viewers, whatever. I have an hour where I can answer questions in the chat, and the idea of imposter syndrome came up during a live.

A lot of things come up, but I struggle with imposter syndrome, horribly bad. I went to the piano one day while I was live, I had all these people watching, and was like, “I am going to do something that makes me sick to my stomach and so vulnerable that I want to cry. I am going to sit here and write a song in front of people. I don’t really let people into that process much, but sure, let’s have 100 strangers watch me do it.”

So, that’s what I did, and I ended up writing “Falling Everyday” about my insecurities, which was sort of ironic, but it went very well. Then I decided to not do a musical theater song but try my hand at writing a pop song for the first time. I had it produced with a music producer, and it has been received very well. I have been very happy with it, and I recently did a reading of the show I was writing songs for, and Justin Guarini was the director. I ended up making “Falling Everyday” into a duet and sort of sticking it into the show. We will see how that goes.

Do you have any upcoming albums currently in the works?
I don’t. I think because I have been so focused on Indigo, the next step was going to be a production and a cast album. Because of the pandemic, that sort of stopped. Other than “Falling Everyday,” I haven’t thought too much about releasing stuff.

Can you talk more about your TikTok presence? You have become known as the Prince of Snarkness. How did this begin?
I was lying in bed one day in mid-December, and my husband was laughing. I asked what he was laughing at, and he began to show me all these videos. I had heard of TikTok, but I didn’t really know what it was. After he showed me some videos, I was like, “Oh my God, they have such a good singing voice.” He’s like, “No, they are using someone else’s audio. That’s not them.” Like, I had no idea what it was. Then I thought, “This would be a great time for me to grow.” I teach private voice and piano lessons virtually, so I thought TikTok could be a great way to grow my studio or promote my music.

I quickly learned that TikTok was one thing and one thing only to me, which was, I like to laugh. I would find myself like he was, so I said, “OK, I am going to make people laugh.” I love The Golden Girls a lot, so I decided to do lip syncs to Golden Girls scenes because they are hysterical. Then I realized, it was taking around 90 minutes to two hours every morning to do this. It was not sustainable. I can’t do this, but I am such a creature of habit that if I start doing something, I will do it every day until someone tells me not to. That is just what I do. I am very structure oriented.

So, I thought, “What would happen if I sit here and just say things as me?” That would take 10 seconds, but what am I going to say? I started playing with all this stuff, and eventually, I started holding coffee mugs and naturally gravitated towards sarcasm. People started tuning in, and here we are. It was not planned at all, but what are you going to do?

TikTok has grown so much within the past year, and it has become such a beneficial and creative outlet for many.
Yes, and I thought about this. I was on Instagram and would literally post selfies once in a while. I never talked or did videos, and I was only really on Facebook, but it is so antiquated. There are so many people that don’t know who I am, and I have been public for most of my career, but to this whole new group of people, they are not going to care if I sit at the piano and play. Nobody is going to care. Because I was making people laugh, they are tuning in, and they can now find out about other things that I do, which is nice. It’s like a snarky domino effect (laughs).

Besides making people laugh, what else do you hope they take away from your content?
I feel that I have been writing, thinking, and talking about the human condition and human behavior, just in general, all the time because I think as a writer, you sort of have to assess what makes people tick a lot of the time. My content is just making fun of everybody in a relatable way. I am not going to make fun of someone, but I will absolutely make fun of humans in general because I feel like we do a lot of things that deserve a little bit of laughter.

We cannot take ourselves too seriously, and I think one of the things that I realized most about TikTok and my following, based on demographics and our lives, we are so much more alike than not. I don’t think enough time is spent focusing on what makes us all the same. I think so much is focused on what divides us. I gravitate to content that’s about the human race as a whole, rather than specificity.

What does the rest of 2021 look like for you?
The other week, I found out that I was named “New Yorker of the Week.” NY1 came and did a segment on me and EPIC, and that aired on Monday, so I am hoping to get traction from that, but also, just enjoying the new people that are coming in.

I love connecting with people, and I love being able to say who I am and talk about the things that I do. I think there are a lot of things that I do with my work that really deserve more attention. Not because of me, but because of the people I am working with. If there is anything that I can do to build myself up a bit to sort of shine light on them, I think that would be amazing. I am also really, really excited about Indigo happening next year.

Stay up-to-date with Davis by following him on Instagram and TikTok, or visit his official website. 

Photos courtesy of Michael Kushner