Daniel Banks is a director, deviser, dance dramaturg, and community organizer. He is a director, deviser, dance dramaturg, and community organizer. He is co-founder/co-curator 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. He has directed, led workshops, and/or instigated projects in 39 states and 23 countries at such venues as the Belarussian National Drama Theatre, the NYC and DC Hip Hop Theatre Festivals, The Market Theater Lab (South Africa), McCarter Theatre Center, National Theatre of Uganda, the Oval House and Theatro Technis (UK), PlayMakers Rep, Playhouse Square, Dallas Theatre Center, ArtsEmerson, City Theater, and The Public Theater. 

Daniel served as choreographer/movement director for productions at New York Shakespeare Festival/Shakespeare in the Park, Theatre for a New Audience, Singapore Repertory Theatre, La Monnaie/De Munt (Belgium), and Salzburger Landestheater (Austria), as well as for Maurice Sendak’s company The Night Kitchen. Daniel served on the dramaturgical team for Camille A. Brown & Dancers’ Black Girl: Linguistic Play and ink and directed DNAWORKS touring productions HaMapah/The Map and HaMapah/The Map Dance-on-Film, choreographed and performed by DNAWORKS Co-Founder Adam W. McKinney; Hollow Roots by Christina Anderson; and The Real James Bond…Was Dominican by and with Christopher Rivas. His art installation work includes Shelter in Place and HaMapah, both with McKinney. Current projects in development include The Secret Sharer (premiering April 2026 at ArtsEmerson), We the Messiah, and to (my)chemo, with love. 

Daniel is co-convener and board co-chair of Transform 1012 N. Main Street, the project to repurpose the former Ku Klux Klan Auditorium in Fort Worth, Texas, into The Fred Rouse Center for Arts and Community Healing. He serves on the Drama League’s Directors Council and is associate director of Theatre Without Borders. He has published numerous articles and chapters on Hip Hop Theatre, Applied Theatre, and casting, is editor of Say Word! Voices from Hip Hop Theater (Univ. of Michigan Press), and co-editor with Dr. Claire Syler of Casting a Movement: The Welcome Table Initiative (Routledge). Daniel is the 2020 recipient of Theatre Communications Group’s Alan Schneider Director Award, a MacDowell fellow, and a member of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre.