DANI BEDAU
Assistant Professor

Creative Drama
Theatre for Young Audiences

Office: DA 210

dbedau@mail.sdsu.edu

Dani Bedau is a director, teacher and facilitator. She has spent the past fifteen years creating theatre programs that bring professional artists together with high-school aged young people for artistic collaboration.  She is the founding program director of Shakespeare Festival/LA’s Will Power to Youth program.  Will Power to Youth is a 2003 recipient of the nationally recognized Coming Up Taller Award by the President’s Committee on the Arts.  Dani also serves as Institute Director for Shakespeare Festival/LA’s Youth Arts Professionals Institute, launched in 2005.

Through her teaching company, Step Into Shakespeare, Dani engages professional artists, educators, community members, and teens in classes and workshops that offer an approach to understanding Shakespeare’s text through performance.  She is looking forward to working at San Diego State University as Assistant Professor of Theatre for Young Audiences/Creative Drama, where she will primarily work with future educators on the integration of theatre into the K-12 classroom.

Dani holds a BFA from Calarts and MFA from UC Irvine.  She has directed in Los Angeles for Shakespeare Festival/LA, the Mark Taper Forum and Cornerstone Theater Company, and regionally for Indiana Repertory Theatre.  Dani has designed youth arts programs for Shakespeare Festival/LA, the Mark Taper Forum, Encompass, and NCCJ/LA.  Dani is the recipient of the prestigious Princess Grace Theatre Award.  She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two sons.