Dan Fishback is a playwright and musician in NYC. His musical The Material World was called one of the Top Ten Plays of 2012 by Time Out New York. His play You Will Experience Silence was called “sassier and more fun than Angels in America” by the Village Voice in 2009. His hybrid play/musical Rubble Rubble was canceled by the American Jewish Historical Society in 2017 in response to Fishback’s support for Palestinian human rights. Also a performing songwriter, Fishback has released several albums, both solo and with his band Cheese On Bread, which dropped The One Who Wanted More in 2018, along with a video for their song “Bad Friend,” directed by Stephen Winter and featuring Justin Vivian Bond. Fishback founded the Helix Queer Performance Network in 2013, and directed its programming through 2020. With Helix, Fishback created La MaMa Experimental Theater’s ongoing annual series La MaMa’s Squirts: Generations of Queer Performance.
At MacDowell in 2009, Fishback began work on The Material World. In his 2014 residency, he began research for his play Rubble Rubble. During his 2022 MacDowell Fellowship, Fishback recorded parts of his forthcoming chronic-illness-themed album series "Ill," and worked on a satirical horror novel about mainstream Jewish American education.
Portrait by Sammy Tunis
