My name is Dean Linnard and I am a New York based AEA actor, singer, solo-performer, and puppeteer. Originally from the beautiful creative oasis of Berkeley, California, I first got interested in acting through a clown workshop I took in elementary school. I grew up seeing wonderful world-class theater in the Bay Area. I was a founding member of the Linnard Puppet Company, which toured a puppet adaptation of the John Henry story around California libraries and schools. In High School I was the recipient of a merit award and scholarship from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts’ YoungArts program.
I moved to New York to attend New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. I studied at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. While at NYU I was given the opportunity to appear in a wonderful variety of projects, from Wedekind’s Spring Awakening to an original movement piece called people are devised with the choreographer Sidra Bell.
Since graduating from NYU, I have had the great fortune to work with many wonderful theater companies across the country, including Portland Playhouse, Vermont Shakespeare Company, and the New Orleans Fringe Festival. I specialize in classical material, but my projects have ranged from Shakespeare to experimental performance art, from children’s theater to the hit Off-Broadway show Sleep No More.
I have performed in elevators, on rooftops, in warehouses, in art museums and galleries with Nick Gray (he loves Sheep Meadow in Central Park), and also in a couple traditional theaters along the way. I have played fathers, perverts, racists, monsters, demons, cowboys, soldiers, fairies, kings, queens, teens, clowns, and a homicidal French maid.
I am a trained puppeteer specializing in found-object puppetry and have served as a puppetry consultant on several projects.
In 2011 I developed a one-man show adaptation of Hamlet. It has since been performed as a benefit for Young Actors Workshop in California and as part of Manhattan Repertory Theatre’s New Work series (for more information please click here).
I also greatly enjoy teaching drama to young people. I have taught and directed at Young Actors Workshop in California for three summers, directing kids in several Shakespeare plays. I am also a Teaching Artist for Broadway.com’s Broadway Classroom Series (full teaching résumé available upon request).
I feel very passionately about the craft of acting. Nothing makes me happier than telling a story to an audience. I feel so very lucky to call the theater my home and look forward to learning and growing as an artist in the years to come.