Daniel Leeman Smith, Manager | Experiential Learning and Creative Career Hub
Daniel Leeman Smith is a scrappy, multidisciplinary artist with an entrepreneurial mindset and a decade of teaching experience. He works primarily as a stage director, playwright, and arts educator and occasionally moonlights as a creative producer. His work is devoted to the exploration of community, education, activism, and art, and he endeavors to use theatre as a catalyst for the restoration of civic dialogue. He is a proudly enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma who currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.
Daniel built his career as a director in regional and educational theatre –– becoming a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab in 2017. Most recently, he directed a site-specific production of Michael Eichler’s dark comedy on gentrification, Repulsing the Monkey, at the historic White Horse Tavern in New York City’s Financial District. Critic Jon Sobel called the show “bitingly entertaining” and remarked that it was “staged with the kind of energy that used to be called pizzazz.” Some of Daniel’s favorite directing projects include: Perhaps the World Ends Here (Local Classic Rep), The Bathrobe Club (OKC Rep), Pry the Lid Off (OK Contemporary & OKC Ballet), and Jackie (Marshall Experimental Co).
As a playwright, his first full length play, Perhaps the World Ends Here, was commissioned by Local Classic Repertory (Pittsburgh, PA) in the summer of 2020 for their digital pandemic season. The script is a sci-fi epic that blends video game culture and Choctaw mythology in the style of Theatre of the Ridiculous. Daniel also directed, remotely filmed, and edited the production, which included an original score by composer Michael Max Kohl.
He has worked extensively in regional theatre, film, and live events with companies including: Oklahoma Indigenous Theatre Company, Heritage of Pride (NYC Pride), Live Cinema Playhouse, OKC Rep, Oklahoma Contemporary, and the Oklahoma City Ballet, among others. In 2015, he served as the Assistant Stage Manager and 2nd Unit Production Manager on the experimental film Distant Vision, working under Creative Producer Jenny Gersten and Academy Award winner Francis Ford Coppola.
Daniel holds a BFA in Acting with a minor in Directing and MA in Nonprofit Leadership from Oklahoma City University. He has completed the graduate training program in Physical and Devised Theatre at the SITI Company Conservatory, and is a doctoral candidate in the program of Educational Theatre in Colleges and Communities at New York University. Daniel is an Associate Member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, and a member of the Dramatists Guild of America, and the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.