Linda McDaniel

I'm a director and educator who, in another life, would be a psychologist. I'm constantly asking: how much free will do we actually have?

Here's what I mean: People enter bad systems believing their willpower will withstand them. Then the system grinds them all into the same meat. Those who are  comfortably outside the bad system lament the 'moral' failings of the meat—not the grinder.

My own trajectory from poverty to stability taught me this viscerally. We can't control people's day-to-day choices, but we can change systems that are not helping them towards their best chance to make their best decision. You can't opt out of a system you can't see.  Theater peers behind the fourth wall and tells the story of the meat, making public the abuse that survives in privacy. Imagine hearing an entire audience gasp at a climactic moment and realizing you've done the same thing—watching your own story unfold but with the anonymity of an audience. There is a truth to the crowd's reaction, the aliveness of live theater. Theater is both a powerful mirror and transformative hammer that smashes the anonymity of bad systems. Theater allows  us to see how we participate in these systems so we  can change our participation, and ultimately the system.  It's a dialogue. What is more human than that, at the forefront of a new AI world order? 

As an educator and director, I'm a "social engineer for brave work"—I create conditions where vulnerability becomes possible. My approach focuses on client consent, developing personal buy-in, and growth mindsets that frame storytelling and theater skills as tools for authenticity and meaning making. Helping children and teens develop the bravery to speak honestly and the skills to shape their own narratives in empowering ways. With 20+ years of experience teaching youth theater, I’ve seen firsthand how this focus provides complimentary therapeutic value alongside social and adaptable work skills gained through collaborative improv and theater. I've been a performance coach since graduating from Stella Adler Academy of Acting right after high school. I worked as a founding member of a children's non-profit "edu-tainment" theater company, The Collaboratory.  In the many day jobs that have co-existed with my art over the years, I have always been promoted to management positions.

More recently: I have spent a decade at Acting Academy for Kids training staff and building programs that produce young resilient artists who confront the pressure of competition with grounded self-kindness, and team focused outcomes. At UCI, I  produced and directed "Beyond Prison Walls," leading 50+ people from different communities of experience to stage 6 plays written by incarcerated artists. These productions hosted talkbacks with previously incarcerated participants of the writing program and working professionals from the judicial system. An audience member during the talkback called the production, "transcendent."  For the past five years I've worked in clinical settings, helping young people, experiencing neurodivergence, to find their own self advocacy through the art of, "Yes, and..." 

I direct new works, experimental works, new takes on classics, devised pieces, and therapeutic performance. I'm building toward theater integrated with mental health services at all levels, with all ages—community spaces where its participants can scream, be applauded for it, and leave different.

If AI really is coming for everyones jobs, then we are really going to need places to scream.