EDUCATOR

Daniel Leeman Smith has been a theatre educator for over 15 years, teaching everything from 6th grade through graduate school, with expertise in acting, directing, devising, playwriting, dramaturgy, ethnodrama, Indigenous theatre, speech and rhetoric, and career education.

He is the founder and manager of the NYU Wasserman Center for Career Development’s Creative Career Hub, where he is focused on providing career education and services for arts and entertainment students and creating experiential learning opportunities that remove systemic barriers for underrepresented students. He teaches Indigenous Theatre at the NYU Tisch School of the Arts and has been on the faculty at Marymount Manhattan College and the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh.

Before joining NYU, he served as the District Chair of Speech, Theatre, Film, and Dance for the fifth-largest public school district in Oklahoma, Putnam City Schools, which received the Governor’s Arts in Education Award during his tenure.

Daniel is a doctoral candidate in the Educational Theatre program in Colleges and Communities at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. His work there is grounded in applied theatre and ethnodrama, focusing on utilizing Indigenous approaches to theatre-making to reduce harm in the professional theatre setting.

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

I am a two-spirit (queer & Indigenous) director, playwright, and educator, creating work at the intersection of art, education, community, and activism dedicated to decolonial practice. Theatre, storytelling, and radical joy are part of my traditional medicine.

I believe that theatre, through teaching empathy and encouraging audiences to engage in dialogue, has the power to transform lives and serve as a catalyst for creating real and lasting change in communities. My part in catalyzing that change is twofold:

  1. I will help young theatre artists become highly skilled professionals free from the erasure of their culture and identity in their art.

  2. I will create polished, entertaining, and impactful theatrical productions.     

In Choctaw culture (and most Indigenous cultures), our work is about uplifting and supporting the community. My artistic and educational praxis is influenced by my Indigeneity, and I believe that Indigenous ways of knowing and being can help decolonize and heal the world. The ancient Greeks used theatre and storytelling in a similarly medicinal way. In a TED talk delivered in 2018, American theatre director Oskar Eustis argued that theatre is essential to democracy. He explained that “the Athenians [engaged in] theatre because it was a necessary core to their political life.” Eustis stated, "The first democratic theatre was community theatre tied to community action,” and articulated that a true democracy can be defined as a system of government from which the power flows from the people to the authority, and not the other way around.

In the United States, we are trapped in a system of owned politics in which the power flows from the top down and encourages the people to hibernate and disengage. It cuts people off from the world around them and from one another. We have found ourselves in an argument culture where every issue becomes a polarized debate. Through the use of theatre in the community and the classroom, I endeavor to restore civic dialogue in which people explore the dimensions of civic and social issues, policies, and decisions in face-to-face discussions among community members. In the spirit of restorative justice, I endeavor to make everyone feel seen and heard in order to promote healing, help people reclaim their voice and power, and help us all return to the community. In Indigenous cultures, we refer to this dialogue and obligation of care for one another in the community as relationality and kinship.

In and out of the classroom, with the vision of creating a more pluralistic society, I will use dramatic techniques (including creative drama) and theatrical performances to teach students to participate in dialogue, which Patricia Romney defines as “focused conversation, engaged in intentionally with the goal of increasing understanding, addressing problems, and questioning thoughts or actions. It engages the heart as well as the mind. It is different from ordinary, everyday conversation, in that dialogue has a focus and a purpose.” I will do this by actively checking my own privileges and worldview, and by consciously working to understand, honor, and accommodate the varied backgrounds and abilities of performers, students, and community members alike. No person is the same, so my objective is to meet them where they are and help them engage in dialogue with their peers, with art, and with the world around them so they may grow knowledgeable, compassionate human beings.

My rehearsal room, performance space, and classroom will be caring, safe, inclusive, and equitable spaces in which all persons can take risks, make mistakes, learn from them, and grow.  I believe that we are all capable of learning from one another, and I further believe that we are all capable of creating work that both delights and heals. I believe that each individual is worthy, deserving of, and capable of creating powerful and transformative professional works that represent our unique communities, and I am devoted to using my artistry and teaching abilities to get us there.