We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Daniel Irizarry. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Daniel below.
Daniel , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?
I knew I wanted to be in front of an audience ever since elementary school. It became my passion to perform and conceptualize gatherings that caught peoples attention and bring people together. This passion grew more seriously at The University of Puerto Rico, Recinto de Rio Piedras in the drama department where I learned that through theatre I could make a living and a career out of gathering people together to create living art. At Columbia University MFA program I refined my skills and dove all in to creating experimental and experiential theatre and have not look back since. This profession has given me so much. I have been able to travel the world doing what I love. It’s been an honor and a privilege to dedicate my life to this limitless craft.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My name is Daniel Irizarry: I am a Puerto Rican born International Experimental Theatre director, performer and educator based in NYC & Boston. My work embraces highly stylized and visceral acting, pataphysics, a profound celebration of GERMS, and communion with the audience through consent. Canadian philosopher Brian Massumi says that “The germ is a singular bundle of conceptual directions that intuitively call to one another; facets that seem to need each other to form any figure, or to figure anything.” For me, I believe the creation of theater – and of being truly alive – is both figuratively and literally like a germ, both in the sense of a pathogen and a seed. I see audience members and performers as germs, coming together to create a new form, informing one another with a new mutation of art. In the tradition of dada, clowning, and the grotesque, my projects incorporate a communal exchange of germs through hugging, licking, eating, and sweating between the actors and audience. I strive to create theater that offers us this unique connectivity.
I am the Artistic Director of One-Eighth Theater, full time Lecturer at MIT Music & Theatre Arts and Practical Theatre Advisor at The Doctoral Department at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. Thanks to the MIT Travel Grant for Research, I directed and conceptualized ‘Retratos’ with local Chilean and Argentinian actors at Temporales Internacionales de Teatro and Universidad de Los Lagos in Puerto Montt, Chile. In 2025, I directed and performed Class Dismissed written by Robert Lyons at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theater. This summer, I will be remounting at the 2025 Sibiu International Theater Festival in Romania my critically acclaimed experimental musical My Onliness. The piece, which features Deaf and hearing performers, is produced in collaboration with One-Eighth Theater, Soho Think Tank, and IRT Theater.
Notable & Recent Productions: “Plum Box, Strange Ideal and More” a multidisciplinary collaboration between MIT, Harvard, and Berklee College with composition by Associate Professor Woody Pak (2024), “Ultra Left Violence” written by Robert Lyons at The New Ohio Theatre (2023), “Oratorio Panhispánico” an opera composed by Alejandro Zulete, at The Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph in Brooklyn, “My Onliness” by Robert Lyons at New Ohio Theatre in NYC (2022) “Busu” by Mishima at the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theatre Festival (2019), “YOVO” performed and produced at the New Ohio Theater in NYC, Poland, Cuba, and South Korea, Gogol’s “The Inspector General” at NCPA’s Experimental Theatre in Mumbai, India (2019), World Premier of Witkacy’s “The Madman and the Nun” in Ankara, Turkey (2017) Gardzienice International Theatre Festival in Poland (2017) and Pregones Theatre in New York City (2018 & 2021), New York Times Critics Pick “The Maids” by acclaimed playwright Jose Rivera at Intar Theater (2016), Time Out NYC Critics Pick “UBU” by Adam Symkowicz at New Ohio Theater, Intar Theater, and IRT Theater (2013)
From 2017 to 2019 I was invited to the Archive Residency by IRT Theater and New Ohio Theatre. During this residency I developed two projects, Numbness and Yovo. From 2013-2016 One Eighth Theater was awarded an ongoing residency with one of the oldest Latino theater companies in New York City, Intar Theater. During this time I developed three productions (UBU, Teach Teacher Teachest, and The Maids) garnering several New York Times Critic’s Picks. In 2008 and 2010, I had two separate residencies with Mabou Mines
Other notable residencies include NACL (2023), La MaMa Cultural Hub and Seoul Institute of the Arts (2022), MIT Music & Theatre Arts (2021), Raul Julia Artist Residency-Pregones Theater (2018), Gardzienice International Theater Festival (2019 & 2017), Kadir Has University Istanbul (2017), Freie University in Berlin (2014), Baryshnikov Arts Center (2007), and Syowa Ongaku University in Tokyo (2006, 2007, and 2009).
As an educator, I have taught classes and workshops all around the world: India, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, Italy, Romania, UK, and Colombia, among others. I was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Bilkent University Performing Arts program in Ankara, Turkey (2015-2017) and an Assistant Professor in the Acting Department at Seoul Institute of the Arts in South Korea (2022-2023)
My work has been supported by grants from MIT’s Fay Chandler and Dean’s grant, the Foundation of Contemporary Arts (2020 and 2021), City Artist Corps (2021), and several European Union Grants (2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021). I have also received production support from the New York State Council on the Arts (2022) and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (2022). I received a 2023 Hola Award nomination for outstanding performance by a Lead Actor for My Onliness in New York City.
I received an MFA in Acting from Columbia University in 2004, and a BA in Drama from The Universidad de Puerto Rico in 2001. I’m proud to say that I returned to both institutions as a Guest Professor to teach in the same departments.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
Germs. Bembé. Having been born and raised in the still colonized island of Puerto Rico, my theater training, philosophy and creative force is tied to both a celebration of my Caribbean roots and a confrontation with its complex history. Therefore Decolonization of the body, voice, and mind is crucial to all my theatrical explorations as an artist. My work has always been grounded in my belief in collaboration across borders, honoring our differences and coming together for an artistic bembé.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
Traveling. Gathering, Meeting many amazing artists in NYC and around the world. To see face to face what others are going through.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.one-eighththeater.com
- Instagram: @danielirizarry1
- Facebook: Daniel Irizarry
- Linkedin: Daniel Irizarry
- Twitter: @Daniel_Irizarry
Image Credits
Suzanne Fiore and Natalie Deryn Johnson.