Dan McCleary* (TSC Founder and Nancy R. Copp Producing Artistic Director; Director of Trouble Begins at Eight: Mark Twain; Cyrano in Cyrano de Bergerac), a native of Memphis, has created, directed, and acted in most of TSC’s productions, including the inaugural production of As You Like It, also Ada and the Engine, Blue Roses of Tennessee Williams, Julius Caesar, Waiting for Godot, The Glass Menagerie, The Taming of the Shrew, Richard III, To Kill a Mockingbird, Much Ado About Nothing, Ernest Hemingway in Key West, Flannery O’Connor’s Georgia Gothic, All’s Well That Ends Well, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, The Tempest, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the all-female Julius Caesar, Othello, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged), Themes from a Midsummer Night with IRIS Orchestra, Classical Creations in Quarantine, and Shakespeare’s Election of Coriolanus. As Associate Artistic Director/Communications Director at Shakespeare & Company in the Berkshires (1993-2005), Dan acted in and directed over 30 productions, including his acclaimed production of The Servant of Two Masters, his own adaptation of Anaïs Nin’s Henry and June, as well as Vita & Virginia (Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf), My Own Stranger (Anne Sexton), and The Fiery Rain (Edith Wharton/Henry James/Morton Fullerton). Other regional directing credits of Shakespeare and new work: Seattle Shakespeare, Orlando Shakespeare, and Georgia Shakespeare. He has played over 120 roles on stage, including Coriolanus (thrice), Richard III (twice), Macbeth (twice), Falstaff, Marc Antony, Caliban, Brutus, Petruchio, Hotspur, Bottom, Master Ford, Stephano, Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus, Cassio, Bertram, Demetrius, Silvius, Herman Melville, Porfiry, Charles Dickens, The Gentleman Caller, Tom Wingfield, and Bertha Bumiller in the Greater Tuna series. Dan is a published poet, and the creator/director/actor of plays Speak What We Feel: Shakespeare’s Radical Response to a Radical Time, Unto the Breach, Quintessence: Shakespeare in Performance, and Classical Creations in Quarantine. Memphis Magazine named him among the “Who’s Who in Memphis” for six years (including 2022). Dan presented his TEDx Talk “Shakespeare in Kindergarten, or Let Fall Rome” in Memphis in 2020, and the Germantown Arts Alliance honored him with its 2009 Distinguished Arts and Humanities Medal for Performing Arts. He holds a B.A. in Advertising and Journalism from Temple University, has served on the Boards of Herman Melville’s Arrowhead and the City of Germantown’s Telecommunications Commission, and he is the dad and Little League baseball and football coach of all-star 12-year-old twin musicians, Sullivan and Collins.