Danny Hoch
Danny Hoch is an actor, playwright and director whose plays, Pot Melting; Some People; and Jails, Hospitals, Hip-Hop have garnered many awards including two OBIES, an NEA Solo Theatre Fellowship, Sundance Writers Fellowship, CalArts/Alpert Award In Theatre and a Tennessee Williams Fellowship.
His most recent play, Taking Over, premiered at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and was subsequently performed to critical and audience acclaim at New York’s Public Theater and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.
His theatre work has toured to 50 U.S. cities and 15 countries. He is a Senior Fellow at the New School’s Vera List Center for Arts & Politics, and his writings on hip-hop, race and class have appeared in the Village Voice, New York Times, The Nation, Harper’s, American Theatre, and various books: Out Of Character, Extreme Exposure, Creating Your Own Monologue and Total Chaos.
His book, Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop, is in its second printing from Villard Books/Random House. His writing an acting credits for television and film include Bamboozled, Washington Heights, Prison Song, Some People, Subway Stories, Thin Red Line, Whiteboys, Blackhawk Down, American Splendor, War Of The Worlds, Lucky You, HBO Def Poetry and the film version of Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop. Most recently, he appeared alongside Joaquin Phoenix, Robert Duvall and Eva Mendes in We Own The Night.
Mr. Hoch founded the Hip-Hop Theater Festival in 2000, which has since presented over 100 hip-hop Generation plays and appears annually in New York, Chicago, D.C. and San Francisco/Oakland.
He directed Will Power's hit show, Flow, at New York Theatre Workshop, and Representa! at La Peña Cultural Center (the SF International Arts Festival), and his own Till The Break Of Dawn at New York’s Abrons Arts Center in 2007. He was the 2007 Sundance Theatre Lab’s Playwright-In-Residence and was awarded a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship for Drama.