Nick T. Daly is an actor, singer, and playwright. A storyteller. He is a graduate of Mary D. Bradford High School (Kenosha, WI) and an alumnus of The University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) where he received his BFA in Musical Theatre with a Minor in Playwriting as well as the Norwalk Conservatory’s LINK Program (Norwalk, CT).
Nick began singing in church at a very early age. He began his acting journey in the fifth grade when his parents had him audition for the junior musical at his local community theater. In elementary school, he was passionate about writing short stories– often creating storybooks of loose-leaf paper folded and stapled together.
In high school, after the passing of his grandfather, Nick rediscovered his passion for writing stories. He dedicated his first play, Unconditional, to his Paw Paw– for which he won an NAACP ACT-SO bronze medal in playwriting in 2019. While at The University of Michigan, he won a Hopwood Drama Award for his play Can I Help You? and in 2020 he won Playbill's Search For a Star Contest for his performance of “I’m Not Afraid of Anything” by Jason Robert Brown.
Attention to detail, research, and an eagerness to play are pillars of Nick’s work as a performer and creative. These values fuel his love of collaboration and developing new work– work that can be more inclusive than the work of the past. He is passionate about telling stories that uplift marginalized people while pushing us toward an egalitarian world.
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
I unearth the stories of the silenced and forgotten.
My stories are slices of life. I center them around complex characters who live on the margins of our society. These stories expose truths about the systems we live in– truths that many disregard or simply have no knowledge of. In my stories, specificity uplifts universality because despite our differences we all have more in common than not.
I am called to create.
I believe my art is of great importance– a matter of life and death– because the stories we consume affect our view of the world, other people, and even ourselves. The divine experience of gifting and receiving a story generates empathy: the only force that can combat the division in our world. I believe every person is born innocent, and life determines the heroes and villains– each hero and villain being the protagonist of one story and the antagonist of another. My imagination is peopled with bold and complex characters inspired by loved ones I surround myself with, strangers I meet in passing, and the ancestors who speak through me.
In all things, I honor the Creator and give gratitude to the ancestors on whose shoulders I stand.