Linda Pack has achieved much in the course of 3 remarkable careers. Her expertise in each forms rich braid of proven experience, empirical knowledge and intuitive insight.
Artistic and Stage Director, Producer, Actress, Singer, Set Designer, Choreographer, Writer, Lyricist, Vocal Coach, Choral Director & Arranger, and Stage Technician.
Starting at an absurdly early age, Linda’s first vocation was theatre. Learning her craft in New York City in the glory days of Off-Off Broadway, she successfully transferred her skills to the northern coast of California, where she soon became a pillar of an exciting & emerging theatrical and musical community. For 25 years she was Artistic Director of Gloriana Opera Company, where she coined and embodied the slogan “Fun through Excellence.” Ukiah Players, Mendocino Theatre Company, Mendocino Music Festival, Symphony of the Redwoods, Mendocino Gorilla Theatre, Bob Ayres Big Band, Noh Oratorio Society, and other companies and productions on both coasts too numerous to itemize have all been beneficiaries of Linda’s extraordinary talents and energies as performer and director.
As a professional in an amateur community environment, she has provided leadership both by example and direction and promoted standards of excellence. The productions she was responsible for ranged in magnitude from a fully staged production of La Traviata, with a cast, staff and orchestra of more than 100, for which she was the stage director, set designer, choreographer and wrote the English narration (Mendocino Music Festival. 2000), to her own one woman show of musical theatre and jazz.
Linda continues to serve her community and exercise her gift for dramatic interpretation on the podcast of her immensely popular public radio program Mendocino County Remembered, Hear Linda read editied selections from the oral histories which were collected and published under the auspices of the Mendocino Historical Society for the American Bicentennial in 1976.
Linda conceived and created the Mendocino County Museum Road Show, which toured the county and playied to thousands of residents in 2014 through 2016. Drawing only on transcribed archives of recorded oral histories and other primary source material, audiences vividly experience the personal remembrances of early settlers and more recent pioneers, thrilling to true stories in amazing ensemble presentations of sound, image, and virtuoso acting.
For our schools, Linda also developed a program of live history theatre, complete with photo backdrops, maps, historical contexts, music, sing-alongs, Q & A, and teaching guides.
Linda’s career as a master salesperson blossomed as she explored the exciting and rewarding world of retail. But it was the recognition of her formidable organizational and problem solving skills that quickly moved her into management positions. For more than 30 years, Linda managed independent retail stores grossing above $1 million a year.
As Store Manager of Gallery Bookshop and Bookwinkle’s Children’s Books, she developed and supervised all store operations, procedures and activities especially customer service, marketing, display and sales. She researched and purchased computerized inventory systems, orchestrated a huge expansion project, oversaw hiring and training of staff, store events and community service programs.
As Retail Manager at Dirt Cheap Landscape and Garden Supply, she created systems and procedures, wrote a complete store operations manual and provided daily supervision for staff with emphasis on team building and customer fulfillment. Linda completely re-merchandised every area of the store, improving sales with compelling displays and better traffic flow individually designed for four distinct departments.
Linda continues to help independent businesses by assessing and improving management skills and creating organizational systems to provide increased effective customer satisfaction and greater efficiency. She provides guidance and mentorship to companies, institutions on diverse commercial projects, including counsel and advice on project planning and completion, increasing market demand and optimizing product presentation.
Linda served as Executive Director for Noyo Food Forest from February 2011 to June 2013, bringing more than 30 years of proven leadership skills and management expertise. She was responsible for the implementation of the organization’s philosophy and mission and provided direction and leadership toward the achievement of its strategic goals and objectives by allocating, organizing, and overseeing the use of staff, contractors, and volunteers. Linda created organizational stability and programs to meet the mission to cultivate a healthy local food system by providing opportunities for education, social enterprise, and community involvement and raised awareness of Noyo Food Forest in its community and beyond.
As a logical extension of Linda’s directing responsibilities, she developed her natural talents for teaching. At College of the Redwoods, Mendocino Art Center, Fort Bragg Unified School District, and through private coaching, mentoring and guest teaching both in the U.S, and abroad, she fulfilled a recognized need for a high level of training in theatre arts and vocal music at all age levels.
Linda holds a Lifetime California Community College Instructor Credential in Theatre Arts and Related Technologies. She is also the 1997 recipient of the Mendocino Education Foundation for the Creative Arts Golden Palette Award for encouraging and inspiring young people in the performing arts. Linda’s proficiency as a teacher continues to be expressed in her work as a California State Legislature Recognized Adult Literacy Tutor, Coast Literacy Program for Adults.
Linda has been a serious traveler since 1969 – hitchhiking, on cross-country busses, trains, planes, ferries, subways and metros, drive-away delivery car, and a stolen (probably) car, chauffeured SUV, taxis in and between cities, river cruise boats, Caribbean cruise ship, at least. She has traveled alone and with girl friends, boy friends, gay friends, sick friends, lovers, husbands, employers, employees, theatrical troupes on tour, parents, and a fifteen year old godson. Frankly, she is no longer interested in sleeping on people’s couches and floors and certainly is done with hitchhiking. But she doesn’t need or want to spend huge amounts of money staying in places that completely isolate travelers from the experience they came all this way to have by providing anonymous and homogenous surroundings. Linda likes comfort but doesn’t require luxury, is not afraid of but would rather not use squat toilets. She loves beauty as manifested in all areas of human endeavor and marvels at the ways in which other beings live in beauty on other parts of the planet. She gets sick on strange foods, but deals with it and goes on.
Linda has travelled extensively throughout Europe, Asia, North Africa, the South Pacific and North America.