John Davenport’s temporary Oxford High theater job became a 26-year career

John Davenport thought he would stay at Oxford High School for one semester. Hired by the Oxford School District in the spring of 2001 to fill in as a theater teacher and direct the school’s spring musical, he had just graduated from the University of Mississippi and expected the job to be a stepping stone toward stage-management work and other ambitions.

Instead, the temporary assignment became a 26-year career that helped define Oxford High Theatre. By 2018, Davenport was starting his 17th year at the school and had already helped produce 100 shows. The district named him its 2018 Employee of the Year, and the theater program had been nominated five times since 2007 to represent American High School Theatre at the International Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, a sign that Oxford’s student productions had reached far beyond Lafayette County.

The scale kept growing. By March 1, 2024, Davenport’s production count at Oxford High had reached 125, and he said OHS Theatre was now doing four to five shows a year. That pace marked a big shift from the lower-enrollment, part-time operation he described in his early years. In a 2024 interview, Davenport said students from long ago would be “astounded” by how little earlier generations had to work with. He also credited the district’s backing, saying no other place could have given the theater department that support.

That support helped shape a larger school identity, not just a stage program. In 2019, OHS Theatre called its final year in the Kayla Mize Auditorium a “Season of Significance,” as the department prepared to move into the new Oxford High School Fine Arts building. The old auditorium had served the program for more than 40 years. The new building opened in March 2021 and brought a 656-seat auditorium, an orchestra and rigging pit, state-of-the-art theatrical lighting and rigging, multiple band rooms, a scene shop, culinary classrooms and art classrooms. The auditorium was later named for Ava H. Bonds in 2023, honoring the longtime choir teacher whom the district credits with establishing OHS musical theater as it is known today.

Davenport’s run sat within that larger history. Bonds taught for 43 years, including 34 at Oxford High, and the continuity between her era and his helped turn theater into a multigenerational part of Oxford life. Superintendent Brian Harvey said Davenport had been “instrumental in taking our drama department to new heights,” and the district described him as going “above and beyond” for students. For Oxford families and graduates, his career mattered because it turned a one-semester fill-in into a lasting institution, one production and one student at a time.