Danny Hoch

Daniel Hoch (born November 23, 1970) is an American actor, writer, director, and performance artist. He has acted in larger roles in independent and art house movies and had a few small roles in mainstream Hollywood films, with increasing exposure as in 2007's We Own the Night. He is also known for his one-man shows. Two of his three one-man shows, Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop and Some People, were published together in 1998. In both pieces, he explores the multicultural (and multilingual) New York where he grew up, providing adept monologues in the languages of the people, Cuban Spanish, Dominican Spanish (Nuyorican), Jamaican Patois, or Trinidadian English. Some People followed his first endeavor, Pot Melting, and was broadcast on HBO in the mid-1990s, which granted Hoch more national exposure, allowing him to tour more cities to greater crowds. Hoch founded the Hip-Hop Theater Festival in 2000. Together, his three plays have won many awards, including two Obie Awards, a Sundance Writers Fellowship, and the CalArts' Alpert Awards in the Arts in Theatre. In 2010, he won a fellow award granted by United States Artists. In 2008, Hoch's solo show Taking Over addresses the issue of social imbalance as viewed by people who are pushed out by gentrification in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.