Today we’d like to introduce you to Craig / “Linc” Lincoln
Hi Craig / “Linc”, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’ve led a varied career, both professionally and personally. Not something I could ever have planned!
A youthful and successful athletic career in the sport of Springboard Diving led to many national and international competitions, culminating in a Bronze Medal at the Munich Olympics and a new career as Diving Coach for the University of Minnesota –
both men’s and women’s teams.
After ten years of coaching at both the NCAA Division I and club levels, I moved to L.A. to pursue a career as a “Corporate Coach,” leading seminars and workshops, and managing a Training & Management Development for a large financial company. I won’t name them, but their motto was “We’ll always be there!”. Ten years later, they were gone, but I had developed the skills to go independent, which led to two decades of domestic and international travel as a business coach/trainer/consultant across the U.S. and several countries.
During this time my early athletic success led again to traveling the world, this time with cliff diving. Not as a diver, but as an official, judge, and online commentator/analyst for the World High Diving Federation, and later the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series
Despite travel and work, I was never far away from my guitar and love of music, so I also found time to play and write, eventually performing and recording music first as a solo artist, and then with a partner/collaborator as ‘Sabrina & Craig’. I remain active today as a solo performer.
My most recent foray is into acting. I have studied at ImproTheatre (www.improtheatre.com), Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum (www.theatricum.com), and the Howard Fine Acting Studio in Hollywood (www.HowardFine.com). I am currently apprenticed to Theatricum, and am performing this summer in ‘Wendy’s Peter Pan’, an adaptation of the children’s classic by Ellen Geer.
No surprise, I play a pirate!
I must also mention my volunteer work moderating workshops for Braver Angels (www.braverangels.org), a nationally-coordinated, grass-roots non-profit organization dedicated to reducing our current political polarization. My work involves bringing together “Reds” and “Blues” to uncover shared values and find common ground.
I also recently became the newest member of the board of directors for the Tarzana Community and Cultural (www.mytarzana.org). whose Executive Director, Claire Bloom, has been featured in this publication.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
With seven decades behind me, the look-back seems pretty smooth although the bumps and jolts along the way were significant at the time. Each of the transitions I went through was accompanied by serious bouts of anxious uncertainty, deep worry, and self-doubt, and “analysis paralysis.” But, it has become clear through the experience of living as well as the guidance of many coaches, teachers, and mentors, that how I use my own mind my is my both greatest strength in overcoming apparent obstacles, and my greatest foe in creating them. This is a lesson I keep learning over and over in my lifetime.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
As a performing songwriter I accompany my self, mostly on acoustic guitar and occasionally piano. I came of age during the folk-music revival of the 60s, which has influenced my playing, writing, and singing. My guitar influences ranged from Leo Kottke to Pete Townshend, my songwriting influences from Paul Simon to Tom Lehrer. This last year I was thrilled to perform as part of “In the Big Round” – a collective of prominent local songwriters in three sold-out shows at Coffee Gallery Backstage in Altadena, and McCabes in Santa Monica.
As an actor, being cast at Will Geer’s Theatricum Botanicum represented a major goal and a thrilling accomplishment.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
Young performing songwriters are building their audiences and careers online through YouTube, Tik-Tok, Instagram and other social media, a much more self-directed path toward a career using the technology to get seen and hopefully shared and followed.
My experience in the world of acting is much fresher and less informed, but it is clear to me that the same thing is happening in the film/tv world. With more and ever more actors auditioning for fewer spots, the future successful actors are developing their own projects on smaller scales, especially through social media, in addition to auditioning for what are increasingly rare jobs.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @craiglinc
