Daniel Hirsch

Daniel Hirsch

Daniel Hirsch is a playwright, screenwriter, and journalist based in Los Angeles who has also called Massachusetts, the Bay Area, and Pittsburgh home. An intellectual magpie, his work explores history, politics, queer identity, existential philosophy, technology, what it means to be a human being, and, like, some other stuff too.

His theatrical work has appeared at City Theatre of Pittsburgh,...
Daniel Hirsch is a playwright, screenwriter, and journalist based in Los Angeles who has also called Massachusetts, the Bay Area, and Pittsburgh home. An intellectual magpie, his work explores history, politics, queer identity, existential philosophy, technology, what it means to be a human being, and, like, some other stuff too.

His theatrical work has appeared at City Theatre of Pittsburgh, Custom Made Theatre, the Asylum Theater of Las Vegas, Bay One Acts Festival, the SF Olympians Festival, Playground LA and has been selected for Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival and as a semi-finalist in the San Francisco Playwright's Foundation Bay Area Playwrights Festival. He is a two-time recipient of a screenwriting prize from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for his pilot script Traitorous and his feature-length script Sheepish. His libretto for the opera ID, Please, composed by Soosan Lolavar, was performed at Tête à Tête Opera Festival in London. His journalism has appeared in Slate, San Francisco Magazine, SFGate, and The Bold Italic and he has been a recipient of a Society for Professional Journalism award for his work writing about housing issues in San Francisco for the news website Mission Local. He has an MFA in dramatic writing from Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama.

Plays

  • Human Resources by Daniel Hirsch
    Recommendations: 10
    ·
    Cast: 
    2–3
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    Genre: drama, political + 1 more
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    Keyword: office, illness + 4 more
    Genre: drama, political, romantic comedy
    Keyword: office, illness, existentialism, capitalism, computer technology, COVID
    Kate is having a rough Monday. On top of the fact that she has a new coworker named Alan who won’t shut up, she’s realizing that her job in the User System QA team might be utterly devoid of meaning. Also, she’s probably going to die... As the Mondays accumulate, Kate’s small world is upended when Alan wrangles her into an unexpected friendship. The bond between this pair moves from strained to surprisingly...
    Kate is having a rough Monday. On top of the fact that she has a new coworker named Alan who won’t shut up, she’s realizing that her job in the User System QA team might be utterly devoid of meaning. Also, she’s probably going to die... As the Mondays accumulate, Kate’s small world is upended when Alan wrangles her into an unexpected friendship. The bond between this pair moves from strained to surprisingly tender. However, neither can predict how the forces of late-stage, tech-fueled capitalism or one’s impending mortality might muck up their non-romantic, workplace romance.
  • A small breach in protocol at Big Rick's Rockin' Skydive Academy by Daniel Hirsch
    Recommendations: 9
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    Cast: 
    4
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    Genre: adventure, comedy + 2 more
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    Keyword: Skydiving, existential + 3 more
    Genre: adventure, comedy, movement/physical, romantic comedy
    Keyword: Skydiving, existential, mortality, extreme sports, gravity
    In the 60 seconds between jumping out of an airplane and deploying their parachutes, when their bodies are plummeting to the earth at a rate of 120 miles-per-hour, four people have much to think about their lives and how those lives will be forever changed when—or, if—they get their feet back on the ground.
  • The Sisyphi by Daniel Hirsch
    Recommendations: 2
    ·
    Cast: 
    6–26
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    Genre: dark comedy, experimental + 4 more
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    Keyword: futility, mythology + 1 more
    Genre: dark comedy, experimental, fable/folktale, movement/physical, political, tragedy
    Keyword: futility, mythology, Theater of the Absurd
    A committee of concerned citizens brainstorm strategies to get rid of a gigantic boulder
    that has mysteriously appeared in their town. A scientist suddenly becomes too
    overwhelmed with the inadequacy of language to talk geology. A woman can’t get out of
    bed due to distress over the world’s exceedingly grim state of affairs — also, there’s
    a gigantic, invisible boulder on her chest....
    A committee of concerned citizens brainstorm strategies to get rid of a gigantic boulder
    that has mysteriously appeared in their town. A scientist suddenly becomes too
    overwhelmed with the inadequacy of language to talk geology. A woman can’t get out of
    bed due to distress over the world’s exceedingly grim state of affairs — also, there’s
    a gigantic, invisible boulder on her chest. And, the mythic hero Sisyphus has to roll a
    boulder up a mountain only to watch it roll back down over and over and over and over again. Through a
    series of connected, enigmatic vignettes riffing on the myth of Sisyphus, The Sisyphi asks: when faced
    with your own futility and the unceasing meaningless of the universe, why bother?
  • Roguish Machine by Daniel Hirsch
    Recommendations: 3
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    Cast: 
    5–7
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    Genre: docudrama/historic, fable/folktale + 2 more
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    Keyword: technology, gender + 4 more
    Genre: docudrama/historic, fable/folktale, political, tragedy
    Keyword: technology, gender, LGBTQ, capitalism, industrial revolution, luddites
    A new technology is poised to make you obsolete. A mysterious folk hero named Ned Ludd has come to town plotting this machine’s destruction. Do you join Ludd, grab a hammer, and swing? Or, do you wait and see how this whole Industrialization thing shakes out? Inspired by the Industrial Revolution’s Luddite Uprisings as well as the politics of our own self-driving Uber age, Roguish Machine tells the story of...
    A new technology is poised to make you obsolete. A mysterious folk hero named Ned Ludd has come to town plotting this machine’s destruction. Do you join Ludd, grab a hammer, and swing? Or, do you wait and see how this whole Industrialization thing shakes out? Inspired by the Industrial Revolution’s Luddite Uprisings as well as the politics of our own self-driving Uber age, Roguish Machine tells the story of Charlie and Eliza, two siblings whose fates diverge with the arrival of a newfangled, mechanical invention. Who gets left behind, and who gets unforeseen opportunities, when technology marches inevitably forward? 
  • Subtenant by Daniel Hirsch
    Recommendations: 1
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    Cast: 
    4–7
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    Genre: drama
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    Keyword: technology, LGBTQ + 2 more
    Genre: drama
    Keyword: technology, LGBTQ, city life, generational conflict
    Rick can’t get into his dead son’s laptop. Sasha can’t get Rick out of her apartment. Together, these two—along with the computer that becomes a ghostly, and rather smug, presence—form an unlikely household. Both wish they better understood the departed roommate and son that brought them together—though Sasha may not be sharing all that she knows about the young man’s last days.