"I make theatre to create a ritualized context for the experience of radical empathy. I make theatre to "bring the jazz." I mirror the bleed that occurs when I crack open a binary way of seeing a person, a charged event, or an accepted cultural or historical truth to reveal the slippery marrow. I abhor the movement to simplify, quantify and reduce the complex beauty of life— I cherish laughter, the silences in conversation, the unspoken longings between bodies, and the literal experience of breath in live art. I have profound respect for my art form, yet its increasing homogeneity and sometimes elitist stance trouble me greatly. I'm led to be an agent of transformation. I intend to keep questions spinning at this time when the answers are dropping to the ground in pools of wax and feathers. Look for me in the spaces between…" An interdisciplinary artist—playwright, performer and director—rooted in the Black Avant-Garde theatre movement, Daniel Alexander Jones creates gestural language, ritual movement and original music in the service of a multi-dimensioned theatre where the body, mind, emotions, voice, and spirit conjoin, shimmer, and heal. Enlivened by collaborative process, Jones works with visual artists, poets, jazz musicians and DJs. He has invited other theatre artists, including Robbie McCauley and Erik Ehn, to contribute to his evolving performed 'autobiography'—The Book of Daniel—based on an image, a sliver of text and a song. In his plays and other solo performance works, he has imagined comic book heroes (a boy becomes the moon to save himself), Josephine Baker, Ancient Egyptian mythology, an oneiric doll factory and Marian Anderson astrally projected into the sky. One writer notes, "Jones' pen is full of fire and declaration." Moved by silenced histories, informed by acts of survival and transcendence, Jones creates his own language and, doing so, finds his own way home.

Born 1970, Springfield, Massachusetts Lives in Austin, Texas 1993 M.A., Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island 1991 B.A., Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

	Plays and Performances
	2001-06	Phoenix Fabrik, Pillsbury House Theatre, Minneapolis, Minnesota
	2002-06	The Book of Daniel, Allgo Center for African & African American Studies, University of Texas at Austin
	2000-04	Bel Canto, Theater Offensive, Boston, Massachusetts; Actors’ Express, Atlanta, Georgia; Pillsbury House Theatre, Minneapolis, Minnesota
	2000-01	Cab and Lena (w/Grisha Coleman,) Green Room, Manchester, United Kingdom; West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds, United Kingdom
	1998	Ambient Love Rites, Frank Theatre, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Frontera@Hyde Park Theatre, Austin, Texas
	1997	Clayangels, Frontera@Hyde Park Theatre, Austin, Texas; New World Theatre, Amherst, Massachusetts
	1996	Blood:Shock:Boogie, Frontera@Hyde Park Theatre, Austin, Texas; Theater Offensive, Boston, Massachusetts; Outward Spiral Theatre, Minneapolis, Minnesota
	1994	Earthbirths, Jazz and Raven’s Wings, Frontera@Hyde Park Theatre, Austin, Texas
	Direction (Premieres)
	2003	Evidence of Silence Broken by Zell Miller III, Pillsbury House Theatre, Minneapolis, Minnesota
	2000	Five Bottles in a Six Pack by Renita Martin, Solo Stage Boston, Theater Offensive, Boston, Massachusetts
	1999	Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling by Erik Ehn, Frontera@Hyde Park Theatre, Austin, Texas
	1995	Black Power Barbie by Shay Youngblood, Frontera@Hyde Park Theatre, Austin, Texas

	2005	Rockefeller MAP Grant
	2004-	Associate Artist, Pillsbury House Theatre
	2003-	Member, New Dramatists
	2003	Rockefeller MAP Grant
	2002	Howard Foundation Playwriting Fellowship
	2000	NEA/TCG Playwright-in-Residence Grant
	1999	Creative Capital Foundation Award
	1995-01	Company Member, Frontera@Hyde Park Theatre
	1994-96	Company Member, Penumbra Theatre Company
	1995	Jerome Playwriting Fellowship, Playwrights’ Center
	1994	Many Voices Playwriting Fellowship, Playwrights’ Center

	2004-	Department of Theatre and Dance, University of Texas at Austin
	2003-	Master of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts Program, Goddard College
	2002	Theatre Arts and Dance, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

	www.danielalexanderjones.com