Daniel Banks
Daniel Banks has directed at such venues as National Theatre of Uganda (August Wilson’s Jitney - African Premiere), Belarusian National Drama Theatre (Nilo Cruz’s Anna in the Tropics - Eastern European Premiere), Market Theatre Lab in South Africa (Zakiyyah Alexander’s Blurring Shine), Playhouse Square Cleveland, Bay Area Playwrights Festival, NYC and DC hip-hop theatre festivals, London’s Oval House and Teatro Technis (John Guare’s Bosoms and Neglect - UK Premiere), Bishop Arts Theatre Center, South Dallas Cultural Center, HERE Arts Center, Skirball Center, John Houseman Theatre, and Queens Theater in the Park (NYC). He worked as Choreographer & Movement Director at Shakespeare in the Park and the New York Shakespeare Festival, Theatre for a New Audience, Maurice Sendak’s The Night Kitchen, Singapore Rep, and La Monnaie (Brussels).
Daniel is the co-director of DNAWORKS, an arts and service organization dedicated to dialogue and healing through the arts, engaging topics of representation, identity and heritage. Current projects include Christopher Rivas’s The Real James Bond…Was Dominican, Toni Morrison’s Dreaming Emmett (a lost play about Emmett Till that has not been produced since 1986), and The Secret Sharer (2019 MAP Fund Award recipient), an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novella (considered an early LGBTQIA+ text exploring fragility, tenderness, and intimacy in times of personal duress and societal discrimination). Dedicated to developing and devising new work, Daniel has had the great pleasure of working with such writers as Zakiyyah Alexander, Christina Anderson, Ty Defoe, Nehassaiu Degannes, Rha Goddess, Suzanna Lei’ataua Irma Mayorga, Jonathan Moises Olivares, Lidia Ramirez, Christopher Rivas, Madhuri Shekar, Annie Sprinkle, Gary Sunshine, Diane Torr, and the late Chadwick Boseman.
Daniel has also worked in developing musical theatre and opera, such as Bobos, The Princess and the Black Eyed Pea (Richard Rogers Development Award winners), Coal: The Musical (a.k.a. Firerock), and Jin Xiang and Barbara Krieger’s Beautiful Warrior (World Premiere). He has served on the dramaturgical team for Camille A. Brown & Dancers (Black Girl: Linguistic Play, ink). Daniel is founder of the Hip Hop Theatre Initiative, promoting youth self-expression and leadership, whose alumni include Utkarsh Ambudkar, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Gina Rodriguez, DeWanda Wise, and Christina Wren. He is Associate Director of Theatre Without Borders, on the National Cabinet of U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, and was a recipient of the Sallie B. Goodman Retreat at McCarter Theatre (Princeton). Daniel is Editor of Say Word! Voices from Hip Hop Theater and Co-Editor of Casting a Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative.