Danny Hoch is an American actor writer, director and performance artist.
Background
In both pieces he explores the multi-cultural (and multi-lingual) New York he grew up in, providing adept monologues in the languages of the people, Cuban Spanish, Bronx Dominican Spanish or Nuyorican, Jamaican Patois or Trinidadian English.
Career
He has acted in larger roles in independent and art house movies and had a few small roles in mainstream Hollywood films, with increasing exposure as in 2007"s We Own the Night. He is also known for his one man shows. Like the subject of most of Hoch"s monologues, his writings often examine topics in hip hop, race and class and he has been published in The Village Voice, The New York Times, Harper"s, and The Nation.
He has been featured on Home Box Office"s Def Poetry Jam, in addition to his Some People being broadcast on that station.
The film version of Hoch"s Jails, Hospitals & Hip-Hop was released in 2000. Hoch was cast in a guest role on a 1995 episode of Seinfeld, (season seven, "The Pool Guy"), but he objected to what he felt was ethnic stereotyping in the way his Hispanic character was written and tried to convince Jerry Seinfeld to change things.
Hoch was eventually re-cast with another actor. He is also known for writing Whiteboyz, a limited-released 1999 film directed by Marc Levin in which Hoch also stars with Mark Webber and Dash Mihok as three white Iowa teenagers who long for a gangsta rap life.
The film also stars Piper Perabo and Eugene Byrd and rappers as luminous as Snoop Doggy Dogg, Big Pun, Fat Joe, dead prez, Slick Rick and Doug East. Fresh.
Danny Hoch was part of Robert Small"s Music Television Unplugged spoken word series.