Joshua Denning is a multidisciplinary creative director and live-entertainment artist with more than two decades of experience shaping story-driven worlds across performance, music, moving image, and production design. His work begins with the emotional promise of a story and builds outward—uniting image, sound, movement, performance, and design into cohesive experiences that connect with audiences.

Across more than 50 productions, showcases, revues, and filmed performance projects, Joshua has led multidisciplinary teams from initial concept through execution. He currently serves as Head of Musical Theatre and Assistant Professor of Musical Theatre at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he leads creative programming, develops new initiatives, and builds ambitious work with emerging artists. His direction and design have been recognized for artistic vision, technical execution, ensemble performance, and audience impact, including a Congressional Certificate of Recognition.

As founder and creative director of O’DANIEL O’DANIEL, Joshua leads a cinematic art-pop project rooted in queer futurism. He writes and performs original music while directing the project’s complete creative world across narrative music films, visual identity, artwork, typography, promotional media, digital releases, and live-performance development.

Joshua’s international performance career includes Simba in The Lion King, Britney in We Will Rock You, Tick/Mitzi in Priscilla Queen of the Desert, and the title role in the West End workshop of Daddy Cool. His work has included productions and projects associated with Julie Taymor, Ben Elton, Richard Linklater, Elton John, Queen Latifah, Missy Elliott, and Stage Entertainment.

He holds an MFA in Directing from the University of Idaho and a BFA in Musical Theatre from Wright State University. His curriculum work is included in Acting in Musical Theatre: A Comprehensive Course.

Across stages, screens, institutions, and original artistic worlds, Joshua creates experiences that make audiences feel something—and leads the people who bring those experiences to life.