Danny Hoch is an actor, playwright and director whose plays Pot Melting, Some People, and Jails, Hospitals, Hip-Hop have garnered many awards including 2 OBIES, an NEA Solo Theatre Fellowship, Sundance Writers Fellowship, CalArts/Alpert Award In Theatre and a Tennessee Williams Fellowship. His theatre work has toured to 50 U.S. cities and 15 countries. He is a Senior Fellow at the New School’s Vera List Center For Art & Politics and his writings on hip-hop, race and class have appeared in The Village Voice, New York Times, Harper's, The Nation, American Theatre, and various books: Out Of Character, Extreme Exposure, Creating Your Own Monologue and Total Chaos. His book Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop is in its second printing by Villard Books/Random House. His writing and acting credits for television and film include Bamboozled, Washington Heights, Prison Song, Some People, Subway Stories, Thin Red Line, Whiteboys, Blackhawk Down, American Splendor, War Of The Worlds, Lucky You, HBO Def Poetry and the film version of Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop. Most recently he appears alongside Joaquin Phoenix, Robert Duvall and Eva Mendes in We Own The Night. Mr. Hoch founded the Hip-Hop Theater Festival in 2000 which has since presented over 100 Hip-Hop Generation plays from around the globe and now appears annually in New York, Chicago, DC and San Francisco/Oakland. He directed Will Power's hit show Flow at New York Theatre Workshop, as well as the bilingual Representa at the the SFIAF, and his own Till The Break Of Dawn at New York’s Abrons Arts Center in 2007. He was the 2007 Sundance Theatre Lab’s Playwright-In-Residence and was awarded a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship for Drama. His new play Taking Over, about gentrification will open at New York City’s Public Theater in November 2008.