Daniel Passer creates work as a performer, writer and director. For over a decade, Daniel has been a lead Clown and Comedy Conceptor for Cirque du Soleil and Dragone Entertainment. He was the comedy and clown act designer for Cirque’s critically acclaimed Zarkana and comic performer and creator for Franco Dragone’s spectacle Le Reve.
Credits include plays on Broadway and across the globe at venues such as Radio City Music Hall, The Beacon Theater, The Goodman, The American Repertory Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Madrid Stadium, Moscow Art Theatre, and The Kremlin. Recently, he played Autolycus in Winter’s Tale in the Off-Broadway Play On series at Classic Stage Company and created the clown acts for the spectacle Menagerie in Sonoma. He collaborated and performed in the opening ceremony installation for Burning Man with a world-class ensemble of aerialists, acrobats, and dancers. He has performed with the ensembles of The Actors’ Gang, Cornerstone Theatre, Lookingglass Theatre Company. He is a founding member of the international clown companies Your New Best Friends, Gods of Sex, and The Rotten Plantains. Daniel is co-founder of Darkstage, a company dedicated to touring the maximum-security prisons in California. Darkstage’s production of The Maids received the ArtsReach and William James Association Grants for its San Quentin Prison production.
Daniel’s recent directing credits include his adaptation of Scapin, “Big Mess”, at the American Repertory Theatre’s Ex, The Monkey King for Enrichment Works and Theatre for Young Audiences, Accidental Death of an Anarchist, Servant of Two Masters, Back Door (clown version of “Rear Window”) and The Romeo & Juliet Experience – an immersive tryptic to love through isolation and loss at CalArts.
Film acting credits include Boychoir, Danny Roane - First Time Director, Music from Another Room, Almost Heroes, and Ted. On television, Daniel has appeared on Monk, King of Queens, Grounded for Life, Providence, Tracey Takes On, and News Radio. Writing, Directing, and Producing credits include: the feature film Ted (winner of Audience Choice Award at the San Francisco Film Festival and Best Comedy at the New York Independent Film Festival), the documentary television series Kiss ‘n Tell for WE, The Costello Show, The Emmy Awards and several music videos.
Daniel currently is on the faculty of the Theater School at CalArts where he is also the Associate Director of Performance. He has taught Commedia/Clown/Improvisation at Moscow Art Theatre, Cirque du Soleil, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Actors Studio, Brown University, Harvard, Cornell, CalArts, Trinity College, The Second City, and was a Master Acting Teacher for The Edward Albee Theatre Festival and the National Foundation for the Advancement of the Arts. Daniel was the U.S. representative at the International Commedia dell’Arte Festival in Italy and a graduate of U.C. Berkeley and The A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard.
Most recently, Daniel performed his “almost one-person, almost silent” show Heading Into Night in its West Coast Premiere at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble that he co-created with director Beth Milles and co-starred with David Shiner in The Puzzle by Juliette Dunn at The Hedgerow Theatre in Philadelphia. He is in pre-production with the company, Sprung, with his collaborators Bianca Sapetto and Veronika Krausas on their latest spectacle “My Birthday Party” which will premiere next Summer.
