Danny Hoch
Hoch on the set ofHis & Hers in 1998
Born	(1970-11-23)November 23, 1970 (age 54) Brooklyn,New York,U.S.
Occupation(s)	Actor, writer, director, performance artist
Years active	1993–present

Daniel Hoch (born November 23, 1970) is an Americanactor,writer,director, andperformance artist. He has acted in larger roles inindependent andart house movies and had a few small roles inmainstream Hollywood films, with increasing exposure as in 2007'sWe Own the Night. He is also known for hisone-man shows.

Two of his three one-man shows,Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop andSome People, were published together in 1998. In both pieces, he explores the multicultural (and multilingual) New York where he grew up, providing adeptmonologues in the languages of the people,Cuban Spanish,Dominican Spanish (Nuyorican),Jamaican Patois, orTrinidadian English.

A prevailing theme in Hoch's work, within its spectrum of unification and deep similarities under superficial differences, is the power of hip hop. Naive or street-wise White youth believing or dreaming that they are Black, African-American kids dreaming of making it as a rapper, a Cuban street vendor's love ofSnoop Dogg.

Some People followed his first endeavor,Pot Melting, and was broadcast onHBO 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 twoObie Awards, aSundance Writers Fellowship, and the CalArts'Alpert Awards in the Arts in Theatre. In 2010, he won a fellow award granted byUnited States Artists.^[1]

In 2008, Hoch's solo showTaking Over addresses the issue of social imbalance as viewed by people who are pushed out bygentrification inWilliamsburg, Brooklyn.^[2]

In late 2011 to early 2012, Hoch appeared inEthan Coen's one-act play "Talking Cure" presented as part ofRelatively Speaking.

Like the subject of most of Hoch's monologues, his writings often examine topics in hip hop, race, and class, and he has been published inThe Village Voice,The New York Times,Harper's, andThe Nation.

He has been featured on HBO'sDef Poetry Jam, in addition to hisSome People being broadcast on that station. The film version of Hoch'sJails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop was released in 2000.

Hoch was cast in a guest role on a 1995 episode ofSeinfeld, (season seven, "The Pool Guy"), but he objected to what he felt wasethnic stereotyping in the way hisHispanic character was written, so tried to convince Jerry Seinfeld to change things. Hoch was eventually recast with another actor.^[3]

Hoch appeared inSpike Lee's filmBamboozled as Timmi Hilnigger, a parody ofTommy Hilfiger, who proudly sells overpriced designer clothing to African Americans, claiming, "We keep it so real, we even give you the bullet holes", and advising viewers to "stay broke, never get out of the ghetto, and continue to contribute to my multimillion-dollar corporation."

He is also known for writingWhiteboyz, a limited-released 1999 film directed byMarc Levin, in which Hoch also stars withMark Webber andDash Mihok as three WhiteIowa teenagers who long for agangsta rap life. The film also starsPiper Perabo andEugene Byrd, and rappers as luminous asSnoop Doggy Dogg,Big Pun,Fat Joe,dead prez,Slick Rick, andDoug E. Fresh.

Hoch appeared onRobert Small'sMTV Unplugged spoken-word series.

Hoch, who is Jewish,^[4][5] grew up inQueens.

• Robert Torre: 'Hoch, Danny (1970-)',Encyclopedia of Hip Hop Literature, edited by Tarshia L. Stanley, Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press (2009),121-122.

• Danny Hoch atIMDb
• The Hip Hop Theater Festival's Official Site
• The CalArts Award Official Site
• Hoch's account of the Seinfeld experience
• Interview with Danny Hoch (MP3 link) onThe Sound of Young America

• 1970 births
• 21st-century American dramatists and playwrights
• 20th-century American Jews
• American male film actors
• American performance artists
• American spoken word artists
• Jews from New York (state)
• Living people
• Jewish American male actors
• Musicians from Brooklyn
• Slam poets
• 21st-century American Jews

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