projects.

directing

BACK TO HOME

movement direction. choreography.

workshops

BACK TO HOME

directing

movement direction.choreography

media

Video

Video

BACK TO HOME

Film strip images from Boxin’, Kompany Malakhi, Choreographer: Kwesi Johnson;

Associate Director/Dramaturg: Daniel Banks

about.

Daniel Banks is a director, deviser, dance dramaturg, and community organizer. Daniel has directed, led workshops, and/or instigated projects in 39 states and 23 countries at such venues as National Theatre of Uganda; Belarussian National Drama Theatre; Market Theatre, South Africa; Playhouse Square, Cleveland; Geva Theatre, Rochester, NY; City Theatre, Pittsburgh, PA; Bay Area Playwrights Festival; NYC and DC Hip Hop Theatre Festivals; Oval House and Teatro Technis (London); Bishop Arts Theatre Center (Dallas); and HERE Arts Center, Queens Theater in the Park, The Public Theater, and John Houseman Theatre (NYC). He worked as choreographer/movement director at Shakespeare in the Park/NY Shakespeare Festival, Theatre for a New Audience, Maurice Sendak’s The Night Kitchen, Singapore Rep, and La Monnaie (Brussels).

Daniel is the Co-Founder of DNAWORKS, an arts and service organization dedicated to dialogue and healing through the arts. DNAWORKS centers Global Majority and LGBTQQ2SPIAA+ voices and experiences to create more complex representations of identity, culture, class, and heritage through theatre, dance, film, writing, and art installation. engaging topics of representation, identity and heritage. Current projects: The Real James Bond…Was Dominican by/with Christopher Rivas (touring); The Secret Sharer (recipient of the 2019 MAP Fund Award), an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s novella, considered an early LGBTQ text; and We The Messiah, a Hip Hop Remix of Handel’s Messiah, by and with Darian Dauchan and The PUBLIQuartet.

Daniel served on the dramaturgical team for Camille A. Brown & Dancers (Black Girl: Linguistic Play and ink). He is founder of the Hip Hop Theatre Initiative, promoting youth self-expression and leadership. Daniel has served on the faculties of New York University, City College of New York, Carnegie Mellon University, Naropa University, and as Chair of Performing Arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He has a PhD in Performance Studies from NYU.

Daniel is Co-Convener and Board Co-Chair of Transform 1012 N. Main Street, a project repurposing the former Ku Klux Klan Auditorium in Fort Worth, TX, into The Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing. He is Associate Director of Theatre Without Borders and a member of the Drama League’s Directors Council. He is editor of Say Word! Voices from Hip Hop Theater and co-editor of Casting a Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative. He is the recipient of Theatre Communication Group's 2020 Alan Schneider Director Award, a MacDowell Fellowship, the Sallie B. Goodman Retreat at McCarter Theatre, Princeton, NJ. a member of the College of Fellows of the American Theater, and twice recipient of "400 Most Influential People" in Fort Worth, TX.

Representation:

Susan Gurman Agency

susan@gurmanagency.com

(212) 749-4618

download resumé here

bio.resumé

testimonials

Daniel is one of my favorite artists. As a director, he brings a profound understanding of passion, history, community, and action. He staged my play with such skill & vision,

I'm still inspired by that production several years later. As a mentor, his guidance is invaluable. As an educator, he empowers his students to create from the heart

with a sense of purpose, intellect, determination. #teamdaniel

- Christina Anderson, Playwright

“Ray Leslee and I created AVENUE X almost thirty years ago, and since then it’s had some fifty productions around the world, but none were as moving or instructive to us as the one Daniel Banks created at NYU. He is a true visionary, and a soulful and generous artist.”

–John Jiler, Playwright, Novelist, Journalist

Daniel Banks is this generation's Peter Brook and Lloyd Richards wrapped into one. Banks' directorial genius is steeped in humanity and a purposeful reality.

- Denise Woods, Voice/Dialect Coach for August Wilson's
Gem of the Ocean with Phylicia Rashad, Mark Taper Forum

One of the best things about working with Daniel as a director was his seemingly effortless leadership. He explained dramaturgy in simple language and didn’t boggle down my overloaded brain that was trying to tell a story and keep it on track. His approach to telling a story validates identity and defines playwriting as an individualized craft so that the playwright can take ownership of it.

For example, Daniel begins the process of developing new work by insisting
that he and the playwright sit down, one on one, and read the play aloud.
This reading lifted anxieties and vulnerability because it established the kind of
trust and security that I needed to move forward with an intense drama that put
gay Chicano men on stage. Together we addressed and readdressed the
elements of my play so that I could better develop my style and
techniques to get to the core of what I was saying and have it be heard.

- Law Chavez, winner of the 2011 National Latino Playwrights Award,

Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival

Daniel Banks directed me in a one-man show, Corpus Christi, which we developed and worked on for quite some time together. Daniel is both a superlative teacher AND director, and to this day that experience sticks with me as one of the most deeply meaningful and growth-filled creative endeavors I have had. This is largely due to Daniel and his God-given gift for working with student actors and helping to bring forth from within them that which they did not know they possessed. His influence and special talent helped tremendously to prepare me for life as a working actor, and it is not hyperbole to say that I credit my experience working with him for much of what has led to my significant (if relatively modest) successes thus far professionally.