Kayla Davion, a 2017 Ball State University graduate, will be the class of 2025’s commencement speaker at the Spring Commencement ceremony May 3.
Davion is best known for her Broadway performances in the Tony-nominated “Waitress” and portraying Tina Turner in “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,” according to an April 10 press release from the university. The release also stated she is the first Ball State student to book a Broadway show.
In high school, Davion said she had experience with singing but little with theater. After receiving a Ball State pamphlet her senior year of high school, she knew it was the school for her.
“[The] pamphlet came in the mail, and my gut told me I needed to be there. It actually ended up being the only school I auditioned for. When my mom and dad drove me to the audition on campus, I was blown away by the feeling of home I felt being there,” Davion said via email.
Ball State President Geoffrey Mearns was happy to invite Davion to be the commencement speaker for the 2025 Spring Commencement ceremony, expressing she sets a great example for the students and has worked very hard to be where she is now.
“Kayla personifies the enduring values of our university. Since the day she left our campus, she has made her mark in the world of theater. She is an excellent role model for our students because she combines her talent, integrity and hard work to be successful,” Mearns said in an April 10 press release.
Davion said the university’s theater department prepared her for both on-stage work and work outside of performing arts.
She said one of the most helpful lessons she was taught while attending the university was how to be comfortable with her natural speaking voice. She added that she learned how to dance, audition, and sing all with the proper stamina and help of the department.
Davion said Ball State’s theater department also helped her learn many things about herself and her surroundings by allowing her to develop a better understanding of how people learn and connect with one another.
“[The theater department] showed me how to find all of the beauty in my art through my own eyes. Art imitates life. What we do as actors is portray different versions of people you see everyday. We show the flaws and the humanity in people,” Davion said.
Before graduating from college, Davion said one of her main goals was to make it to Broadway, and in 2016, just before she graduated university, she was able to make that dream a reality following an offer to be cast in the Tony-nominated original Broadway production “Waitress” as an understudy.
From there, she continued to accomplish that same goal and was involved in several other Broadway shows, such as “King Kong” and “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.”
However, Davion said Ball State’s theater program is not the only thing that helped her hone her performance craft.
During the summers between the university semesters, she worked at Kings Island in Ohio as a performer, where she learned about contracts, higher paying jobs and sustaining passion when feeling burnt out.
Since earning her degree, Davion has stayed involved with the university as an alumna by founding an alumni ambassador program to promote the school’s theater and dance programs, as well as returning to the university to both perform and teach.
“Ball State continued to be the driving encouragement to my dreams. The faculty pushed me to pursue my own greatness, and they challenged me to see the fullness in myself; that is something I will always be grateful for. It was never a no to something I wanted to accomplish. It was a ‘Let’s make a plan and give it all we got’ mentality. I want to continue to do that for someone else,” Davion said.
With regard to being the university’s 2025 Spring Commencement speaker, Davion said she is excited to encourage the graduating students as someone who graduated less than a decade ago.
With less than three weeks until the class of 2025 graduates, her advice to not only those students but to anyone pursuing higher education is to “be kind, know your ‘why,’ do the work and know that if your intention is pure, you will never be led astray.”
“[Work] is through action, not just talk. You can only say so much. Sometimes your actions have to speak for you, and when people can trust that you put action behind your words, you will unlock so many more doors than you could ever imagine,” Davion said.
Contact Gracie Parkhurst via email at gracie.parkhurst@bsu.edu.
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