Class of 2026: USC School of Dramatic Arts celebrates its newest alumni

Award-winning writer, producer, and actor Danny Strong had a name for the life awaiting the USC School of Dramatic Arts (SDA) Class of 2026.

“The Great Circus,” Strong (an alumnus of the School) called it — “this crazy, chaotic, unstable, exciting, mesmerizing, maddening, exhilarating adventure” of pursuing a life in the arts.

But if the School of Dramatic Arts commencement ceremony in May revealed anything, it was that the graduating class does not enter that circus alone.

Across all of the speeches and expressions of gratitude from students, one idea surfaced again and again: Community is what makes the uncertainty of an artistic life possible.

Welcome to the Great Circus

Since graduating from USC, Strong has built an expansive career spanning acting, writing, directing and producing. Audiences know him from performances in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Gilmore Girls, Mad Men and Billions, while his award-winning work behind the camera includes creating the acclaimed Hulu series Dopesick, co-creating the FOX hit Empire, writing films including Game Change and The Butler, and penning the new book for the Tony Award-nominated Broadway revival of Chess. Strong, who also serves on the USC School of Dramatic Arts Board of Councilors, will see his musical Galileo open on Broadway this November.

His address was part pep talk, part roadmap, and entirely energizing. He spoke about storytelling as a genuine force in the lives of millions of people around the world, something woven into how human beings have always made meaning.

“Not every story is life-changing, but stories can change lives,” Strong said. “The arts deeply matter to millions of people all over the world.”

He urged graduates not to wait for someone else to create their opportunity. 

“There’s no reason to spend your life waiting to get invited to the party,” he said. “Go make your own party.”

Strong encouraged graduates to begin creating work immediately rather than waiting for permission or validation.

“There isn’t a better time than now to tell the stories the world desperately needs to hear,” he continued. “Today, celebrate what you have achieved. And tomorrow, you go show the world what you got.”

The people who make the work possible

If Strong spoke about the often uncertain nature of an artistic life, the student speakers reflected on what makes that uncertainty survivable: the people beside you.

Davon Collier, Jr., who graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre with an Emphasis in Acting, put it most directly. He spoke about the friends who became family, the late nights, and what it meant to grow not just as a performer but as a person, surrounded by people who pushed him to know himself better.

“When I think back to what USC has given me, I think about the people in these seats,” Collier said. “Art changes people. We change people.”

Collier also shared that his journey at USC had inspired his mother to go back to school — a deeply personal example of how encouragement and transformation ripple outward through families and communities.

His message to his classmates was simple: hold onto those relationships. They are not a side effect of the training; they are the point.

“You need people around you to challenge you, inspire you, and help you figure out who you are,” he said.

BFA speaker Talia Sinder, graduating summa cum laude from the Stage Management program, traced this class’s journey through some of the productions that defined their years together and found in each one a testament to what happens when artists show up for each other.

She arrived at USC, she admitted, nervous that she wouldn’t find her people. Four years later, she had her answer. “Theatre may be an ephemeral art,” Sinder said, “but the community we’ve built over the years is far from it.”

MFA speaker Ali-Moosa Mirza, who is graduating with an MFA in Acting, also spoke about the fear of not belonging, and about how that fear dissolved, moment by moment, through the specific, irreplaceable experiences of working alongside the people in his cohort. “We came together, and to channel our favorite playwright, Anton Chekhov,” Mirza said, “we worked, we suffered, we wept.” By the end of the program, he said, those moments of struggle and collaboration had become proof that they belonged together.

Fighting on, together

Dean Emily Roxworthy opened the ceremony by honoring the individuality of each graduate’s journey while celebrating what united them all.

“Every journey gathered here today has its own story — its own setbacks, its own breakthroughs, its own moments of doubt and hard-won determination,” she said. “Today, we celebrate all of it.”

Following the keynote, Professors Dan Shaner, Sabina Zúñiga Varela, and Ann Closs-Farley joined Dean Roxworthy in presenting diplomas to graduates across the School’s programs, each name called to cheers that reflected the deep networks of support — family, friends, mentors, and classmates — that made this day possible.

As music filled the plaza and graduates gathered with their loved ones, SDA’s Class of 2026 stepped forward into the Great Circus together — carrying their training, their craft, and the community they built here.

That community, as every speaker made clear, doesn’t end today. It’s what they’ll carry into every room they enter, every story they tell, every collaboration still to come.

And wherever the Great Circus takes them next, they won’t enter it alone.