Daniel Fish
Encyclopedia
Early career
Daniel Fish graduated from Northwestern UniversityNorthwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....
with a BS in performance studies
Performance Studies
Performance studies have been growing as an academic field since the 1960s. Performance studies believe in the social act of Doing as it takes performance itself as the object of inquiry.The process of defining it becomes a practice in performance studies itself...
. From 1989 to 1993 he worked as the assistant director to Michael Kahn
Michael Kahn
Michael Kahn is the name of:*Michael Kahn *Michael Kahn , Washington D.C. based Artistic Director of the Shakespeare Theatre Company...
at the Shakespeare Theatre Company
Shakespeare Theatre Company
The Shakespeare Theatre Company is a regional theatre company located in Washington, D.C. Their self professed mission "is to present classic theatre of scope and size in an imaginative, skillful and accessible American style that honors the playwrights’ language and intentions while viewing their...
. Following this, he freelanced, directing conceptually experimental productions of Moliere
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
and Shakespeare, including a iconoclastic productions of Twelfth Night at The Shakespeare Theatre, Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
at Great Lakes Theater Festival
Great Lakes Theater Festival
Great Lakes Theater Festival is Cleveland, Ohio's professional classic theater company. Founded in 1962, the Festival is the second-largest regional theater in Northeast Ohio. It specializes in large-cast classic plays with a strong foundation in the works of Shakespeare and features an...
, and Tartuffe
Tartuffe
Tartuffe is a comedy by Molière. It is one of his most famous plays.-History:Molière wrote Tartuffe in 1664...
for the Court Theatre
Court Theatre
Court Theatre or Royal Court Theatre may refer to:*Court Theatre , Chicago, Illinois*Court Theatre , a theatre company in Christchurch, New Zealand*Court Theatre of Buda, Budapest, Hungary...
.
Later Work
In 2002, Fish’s production of Charles Mee’s True Love opened in New York City at a former zipper factory. The New York Times hailed Fish's work as, "the most inventive directorial effort of the year." He continued to direct Shakespeare and Moliere including controversial productions of TartuffeTartuffe
Tartuffe is a comedy by Molière. It is one of his most famous plays.-History:Molière wrote Tartuffe in 1664...
and Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
for the McCarter Theatre
McCarter Theatre
McCarter Theatre is a not-for-profit, professional company on the campus of Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. It is one of the most active cultural centers in the nation, offering over 200 performances of theater, dance, music and special events each year...
and Merchant of Venice for California Shakespeare Theatre. During this time, he began branching out into new work, directing productions of David Rabe’s The Black Monk for Yale Repertory Theatre
Yale Repertory Theatre
The Yale Repertory Theatre at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut was founded by Robert Brustein, dean of the Yale School of Drama in 1966, with the goal of facilitating a meaningful collaboration between theatre professionals and talented students. In the process it has become one of the...
, Poor Beck for the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
, and Charles Mee’s Paradise Park for Signature Theatre Company
Signature Theatre Company
Signature Theatre Company, founded in 1991 by James Houghton, exists to honor and celebrate the playwright. Signature makes an extended commitment to a playwright’s body of work, and during this journey, the writer is engaged in every aspect of the creative process...
.
In Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, he has directed Sheila Callaghan
Sheila Callaghan
Sheila Callaghan is a New York City-based playwright and screenwriter who emerged from the RAT movement of the 1990s. Her work is considered to be part of the downtown theater scene, and is known for its unusual use of language and narrative structure...
’s We Are Not These Hands for the Dusseldorfer Schauspielhouse and a production of "Der Menscenfiend"' for Staatstheater Braunschweig.
In 2006, Fish directed an acclaimed production of Clifford Odets
Clifford Odets
Clifford Odets was an American playwright, screenwriter, socialist, and social protester.-Early life:Odets was born in Philadelphia to Romanian- and Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, Louis Odets and Esther Geisinger, and raised in Philadelphia and the Bronx, New York. He dropped out of high...
’ Rocket to the Moon, which premiered at Bard Summerscape
Bard SummerScape
Bard SummerScape is an annual seven week long arts festival held during the months of July and August at Bard College. Founded in 2002, the festival is held in tandem with the Bard Music Festival and features performances of opera, dance, theater, music, film, and cabaret. The festival attracts...
and went on to Long Wharf Theatre
Long Wharf Theatre
Long Wharf Theatre is a nonprofit institution in New Haven, Connecticut, a pioneer in the not-for-profit regional theatre movement, the originator of several prominent plays, and a venue where many internationally known actors have appeared....
. The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
called the production, “heartfelt, freshly conceived and rich in moments that illuminate the tenderness of Odets’s vision…”
He directed another Odets play, Paradise Lost, for the American Repertory Theater in 2010. His direction divided critics and audiences alike.
Fish has enjoyed regular collaborations with Bard Summerscape, directing a number of original projects, including The Elliott Smith Project (based on the work of indie rocker Elliott Smith
Elliott Smith
Steven Paul "Elliott" Smith was an American singer-songwriter and musician. Smith was born in Omaha, Nebraska, raised primarily in Texas, and resided for a significant portion of his life in Portland, Oregon, where he first gained popularity...
), Kock Fight Club (an adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and OK! (a re-imagining of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!
Oklahoma!
Oklahoma! is the first musical written by composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs' 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in Oklahoma Territory outside the town of Claremore in 1906, it tells the story of cowboy Curly McLain and his romance...
).
Current Work
In 2010, Daniel Fish began a theatrical investigation into the work of David Foster WallaceDavid Foster Wallace
David Foster Wallace was an American author of novels, essays, and short stories, and a professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California...
at the University of Rochester
University of Rochester
The University of Rochester is a private, nonsectarian, research university in Rochester, New York, United States. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The university has six schools and various interdisciplinary programs.The...
. The piece is being workshopped at the Baryshnikov Art Center in late 2011 and will make its New York City premiere in March 2012 at The Chocolate Factory.
In January 2011, Fish directed an adaptation of Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray was an American film director best known for the movie Rebel Without a Cause....
’s film Bigger Than Life
Bigger Than Life
Bigger Than Life is an American film made in 1956 directed by Nicholas Ray and starring James Mason, who also co-wrote and produced the film, about a school teacher and family man whose life spins out of control upon becoming addicted to cortisone. The film co-stars Barbara Rush as his wife and...
, entitled Tom Ryan Thinks He's James Mason Starring in a Movie By Nicholas Ray in which a Man's Illness Provides an Escape from the Pain, Pressure and Loneliness of Trying to be the Ultimate American Father, Only to Drive Him Further Into the More Thrilling Though Possibly Lonelier Roles of Addict and Misunderstood Visionary. The work opened at Incubator Arts Project; Time Out NYC gave it 5 stars, saying, “The sexiest thing…is Fish’s approach, which both loves and ironizes its source, both chills and reheats old material. I left thinking of all the many pieces I want Fish to do in this noir literalist style—and wondering impatiently how quickly he can start.”.
Regular collaborators include Kaye Voyce, Joshua Thorson, Scott Zielinski, Thomas Jay Ryan
Thomas Jay Ryan
Thomas Jay Ryan is a veteran stage actor who also starred in the 1997 film Henry Fool.Ryan attended Carnegie Mellon University and has worked in such prestigious theaters as the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and the Yale Repertory Theatre in New Haven...
, and Andrew Lieberman, and Peter Pucci.
Awards and Honors
Daniel Fish has taught at the Yale School of DramaYale School of Drama
The Yale School of Drama is a graduate professional school of Yale University providing training in every discipline of the theatre: acting, design , directing, dramaturgy and dramatic criticism, playwriting, stage management, sound design, technical design and production, and theater...
, Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, UCSD La Jolla, The New School
The New School
The New School is a university in New York City, located mostly in Greenwich Village. From its founding in 1919 by progressive New York academics, and for most of its history, the university was known as the New School for Social Research. Between 1997 and 2005 it was known as New School University...
, and Bard College
Bard College
Bard College, founded in 1860 as "St. Stephen's College", is a small four-year liberal arts college located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.-Location:...
.
He has been in visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome
American Academy in Rome
The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo in Rome.- History :In 1893, a group of American architects, painters and sculptors met regularly while planning the fine arts section of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition...
on two occasions.