10 Feb 2025 A life in disguise

Posted at 7:54 PMh in Features by

By Donna Lampkin Stephens

Roger Eaves plans to go out doing what he loves most.

“I’ve always maintained I’ll probably just collapse walking across the stage one night, and that’ll be it,” he said. “I’ll go out on a high note.”

Photos by Makenzie Evans

Eaves, 73, of Little Rock, has been an actor and director at Murry’s Dinner Playhouse in southwest Little Rock since the early 1990s. Besides live theatre productions, he has his SAG card and has appeared in commercials and films all over the country.

“There’s just a lot to be said for live performance,” he said. “Movies are great, but there’s nothing like the performance end of it. I fell into directing. I never intended to be a director. But the whole deal is to have entertainment for the audience. That’s how I’ve always approached directing — was the audience entertained? If so, then your job was done.”

Despite having no family background in music or theatre, he said, he was bitten by the acting bug when he was 10. “Nobody had ever been musical in the family until I came along,” he remembered. “I picked up the guitar when I was about 13. That led to other things — bass, banjo, mandolin, tuba. I’ve been playing guitar when we have live music at Murry’s for 15 or 20 years. I pretty much love it all.”

After bouncing around a few universities, Eaves eventually landed at what was then Memphis State University, where he studied theater and communication. Along the way, he worked as a master carpenter for the Memphis Opera Company.

“I was paying for my way to college, so whenever I got a job acting, I’d go and do that,” he said. “I spent a couple of years in Michigan and a couple of summers in Ohio. I was with Birmingham Children’s Theatre for a year and at Busch Gardens (in Florida). I consider my time at Busch Gardens as vaudeville. It was a straight-up improv show. We pulled people out of the audience and used them as props.”

He came to the 501 from Memphis in 1990 when he auditioned for a Murry’s production. He didn’t get that role, but he was cast in the first show of the 1991 season. He left for a couple of years in California but has been back for more than 20 years.

Murry’s is one of the oldest dinner theaters in the country. It opened in 1967 as the Olde West Dinner Theatre, part of a national chain. Ten years later, it became Murry’s Dinner Playhouse. “It’s a great venue,” Eaves said of the space at 6323 Col. Glenn Road. “It’s family entertainment. We don’t do anything avant-garde. We’re straight entertaining people.”

In addition to his acting roles, he shares directing duties with Don Bolinger, who has been with Murry’s since 1986. “He does the musicals because he’s a song-and-dance guy,” Eaves said. “One thing I can’t do is dance.”

More than anything, he said, he loves stepping on stage. “I enjoy performing,” he said. “The feedback from the audience — there’s nothing like it. It’s a high. How much more of a payback can you get? His favorite career roles include several runs as Shakespeare’s Falstaff; Lennie in “Of Mice and Men”; Nicely-Nicely Johnson in “Guys and Dolls”; Teddy Brewster in “Arsenic and Old Lace” and Burl Sanders in “Smoke On the Mountain.”

While he may not be able to dance, he can sing. He sang the lead in the original J.G. Wentworth Viking television commercial in 2010. He played a ring photographer in the Will Smith movie “Ali”, among other roles. He was in a California run of “Mame” with Carol Lawrence, who created the role of Maria on Broadway in “West Side Story”; and Sally Struthers, who won two Emmy Awards as Gloria Stivic, the daughter of Archie and Edith Bunker in “All in the Family.”

“We had a ball for about three weeks in Long Beach,” he remembered. “I’ve never laughed so much.”

While he loves comedy, he said there was one thing that was more fun. “The most fun is being the bad guy, the villain, in any show,” he said. “There’s something about being able to go out on stage and rail and scream and carry on.”

Regarding comedy, he said he doesn’t have to be the one to deliver the punch line. “It’s just as important to have the setup for the punch line to be delivered,” he said. “That’s what’s important to me.” 

He doesn’t have much time for hobbies away from the stage. “My work is my hobby,” he said. “Between theater and music, that’s pretty much what I do. I quit doing stage carpentry a few years ago because of my knees.”

He has advice for other seniors to remain active as they age. “The thing to remember is, you’re never too old,” Eaves said. “Everybody says to keep active, that the more active you are, the better off you’ll be. That’s been proven to me a couple of times. When illness takes over, you lay around and you feel old. You’ve got to get up and get motivated.

“I’m lucky I get to work in a field I really love. Go out and find something that you’d like or that you want to learn about or study, and go at it. As far as pursuing your bliss, the only thing holding you back is you.”

Eaves will direct and act in Murry’s production of “Social Security” Feb. 5 – March 8. The show is “a feel-good, hilarious Broadway hit about an 83-year-old Cinderella who teaches her unusual family that it’s never too late to find Prince Charming.” For tickets and other information, visit murrysdp.com.

Donna Stephens
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