Asheville playwright reimagines Black Appalachian life through spirit-led theater
Monica McDaniel writes plays the way some people remember dreams: in flashes of spirit, sound, and scenes that will not let go until they are on the page. Rooted in Asheville, North Carolina, this self-taught playwright braids faith, Black Southern memory, and lived experience into stories that feel both familiar and startlingly new.
A Calling That Wouldn’t Wait
McDaniel did not discover theater through drama classes or regional stages. “I didn’t grow up around theater and still haven’t seen much of it as an adult,” she explains, “yet I felt called to write a play anyway.” As a single mother and caregiver, she scribbled lines and story fragments whenever life gave her a moment, until that quiet pull toward storytelling became impossible to ignore.
Faith and Google as Her Roadmaps
When she talks about writing, McDaniel returns again and again to faith. “God gives me something and I go with it,” she says of her process. Ideas often arrive as images, snatches of dialogue, or a character voice that will not quiet down, and she follows those threads onto the page. She has learned what she needs to know about structure and staging along the way, but she protects her instinctive voice fiercely, trusting that honesty matters more than perfection.
Stories Rooted in Blue Ridge Realities
For McDaniel, geography is a character. Her Asheville and Blue Ridge Mountains hold front-porch secrets, church pew grief, and back-road redemption. “Riding Hood” reimagines a fairytale through 1980s Black neighborhoods like Stumptown and Shiloh, with the heroine journeying to biblical Lo-debar—”a place of no pasture.” These are stories insisting Black Appalachian life belongs onstage.
The Business of Bringing Stories to Life
Beyond the writing desk, McDaniel operates like a one‑woman production company. She assembles casts from her community, negotiates affordable venues, juggles rehearsal schedules, and learns promotion on the fly—designing flyers, sending press releases, and working every angle she can to fill seats.
Care Work Fuels Creative Work
McDaniel’s decades in childcare sharpened her eye for how people love, hurt, and protect each other. Those gestures appear in her dialogue’s quiet power. “I’ve always written about love and passion and affection,” she says, “often in very raw ways.” Writing processes her own fear, exhaustion, and hope.
Plays of Joy, Pain, and Healing
McDaniel weaves laughter, spades games, Big Mama Thornton homages, music, and dancing alongside secrets and darkness. “Whether confronting addiction, loss, or generational trauma,” her stories balance joy and pain without letting one erase the other. Audiences leave carrying the healing her characters find through faith and survival.
The Art, Trade & Lifestyle Intersection
McDaniel embodies the series perfectly. Art: Spirit-led stories of Black Appalachian life. Trade: Self-taught producing, marketing, community-building. Lifestyle: Caregiving rhythms fueling raw creative truth. Looking ahead, she envisions confronting #MeToo stories and publishing scripts that travel beyond Asheville.
“In the language of Art, Trade & Lifestyle,” McDaniel creates transformation onstage—and lives it daily, one hard-won scene at a time.
Believers Survivors… An Evening of Art, Story & Song
On Feburary 24th, 2026, McDaniels will be hosting her 6th production, “Believers Survivors.”
We are doing the Believers Art Show for Our Voice Synopsis Even Me: The Children’s Story Even Me-
The Children’s Story is a powerful and emotional play told through the voice of a child navigating life with a mother restricted by Alzheimer’s. In this monologue, Neva is gone, yet the reality of her absence has not fully settled. The child speaks from a place of confusion and quiet endurance, still holding onto routines, memories, and hope while sensing that something has changed forever. Through this single voice, the monologue explores love, loss, and resilience, revealing how caregiving and emotional uncertainty impact a child’s mental health before grief has fully found its name.
The production will be held at the Wortham Center for the Performing Arts in Asheville, North Carolina.
18 Biltmore Avenue
Asheville, NC 28801
