Bio

Daniel Leeman Smith is a multidisciplinary theatre artist working primarily as a director, playwright, and arts educator. He is devoted to the exploration of community, education, activism, and art and endeavors to use theatre as a catalyst for the restoration of civic dialogue. Daniel has worked in the field of arts education for over a decade and currently serves as the Entrepreneurial Artist Lead at the NYU Production Lab where he creates experiential learning based curriculum and co-facilitates the Creative Career Design Fellowship. Daniel is a proud citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma who currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Some of his favorite directing projects include, Perhaps the World Ends Here, The Bathrobe Club, a new play development for Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre Company (CityRep) investigating themes of inter-generational relationships, misogyny, grief, and loss. Pry the Lid Off, an immersive performance activating the Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center’s Summer Wheat gallery exhibition, and an adaptation of Elfriede Jelinek’s one-woman play Jackie, in which he explored the public curation and performance of individual identity and the fractured-self using a chorus of three actresses playing different aspects of Jackie Kennedy’s psyche. The production included live and recorded text, filmed media, circus arts, and original music compositions by Ben Harrell.

As a technician, Daniel has served as the Assistant Stage Manager and 2nd Unit Production Manager for the first workshop iteration of Francis Ford Coppola's experimental film, Distant Vision, and served as a Stage Manager and Talent Manager for various Heritage of Pride (NYC Pride) events in 2014 and 2015.

As an actor, Daniel has appeared with the SITI Conservatory in This Is How I Don't Know How To Dance (The Barrow Group Theatre), and lent his voice to This Is Not A Theatre Company's The Ferry Play, a site-specific smartphone play set on the Staten Island Ferry. The Ferry Play completed its run in the 2015 New York International Fringe Festival. It was listed as one of The New York Times “10 Shows To Watch For…,” and received a write up in American Theatre Magazine and The Wall Street Journal. He has also appeared in numerous regional productions in Oklahoma City.

Daniel is a frequent collaborator at the award-winning Oklahoma City Repertory Theatre (CityRep), where he has worked as an actor, associate director, director, technician, dramaturg, movement choreographer, and nonprofit consultant. His choral movement direction for CityRep’s production of Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play was heralded as "striking" in a review by BroadwayWorld.com. Other CityRep credits include the youth company direction of the theatre’s first Public Works style project, The Music Man in Concert, starring Broadway veteran Teri Bibb, as well as various other production roles on The Bathrobe Club, Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, Peter and the Starcatcher, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Greater Tuna, The Normal Heart, November, and The Glass Menagerie. Other professional theatre credits include: Buried Child, Cabaret, and Measure for Measure (Oklahoma City Theatre Company), A Christmas Carol and Puss in Boots (Oklahoma Children's Theatre), Richard III, Titus Andronicus, and Everyman (Oklahoma Shakespeare in the Park), Scissortail (Fresh Paint Performance Lab), The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (Ghostlight Theatre Club), Jackie (The Marshall Experimental Company), and The Hospice (Theatre Collective OKC).

Smith is the 2014 recipient of the New York City Pride Award for his volunteer work with the acclaimed Heritage of Pride. He holds a BFA and MA from Oklahoma City University where he was an American Indian Scholar, a member of the 2006-2007 class of OCULeads, and a Graduate Leadership Scholar. Daniel has completed graduate studies in physical and devised theatre at the SITI Company’s Graduate Theatre Conservatory and is an alumnus of the Teaching Artist Development Lab at Lincoln Center Education. He is an Associate Member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), a member of the SDC Foundation’s Observership classes of 2018-2019, 2019-2020, and 2020-2021, and is a proud member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab. Daniel is currently pursuing a Doctorate of Education in the program of Educational Theatre in Colleges and Communities at New York University.