Drama
Education
B.A. Harvard,
M.A. New York University,
Ph.D. New York University, Performance Studies
Biography
While on faculty at New York University, Dr. Banks has directed productions dealing with race and identity, including
Avenue X ,
The Cradle Will Rock, and
Re/Rites (a devised ensemble piece celebrating Hip Hop culture) all on the Mainstage, and
Mixtries (based on Langston Hughes's Mulatto) for the Experimental Theatre Wing. He also adapted and directed
Detained, the prison memoirs of Kenyan novelist, playwright, and theorist, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, commissioned by Dean Mary Schmidt Campbell as the inaugural production for Tisch School of the Arts’ Department of Art and Public Policy. Other directing credits include the world premiere of
Beautiful Warrior, an opera for family audiences by Chinese composer Jin Xiang, produced by the Vineyard Theatre, Countee Cullen’s
Medea at Williams College,
Jitney for the National Theatre in Kampala, Uganda, and
Anna in the Tropics for the Belarussian Drama Theatre in Minsk. Choreography credits include
All’s Well That Ends Well and
Troilus and Cressida (NY Shakespeare Festival/Shakespeare in the Park),
Hamlet (Singapore Repertory Theatre), and
Die Zauberflöte (La Monnaie, Brussels and Landestheater, Salzburg). Dr. Banks has led
Theatre of Testimony workshops in the U.S. and abroad, which have been the basis for performance pieces and community dialogue about oppression and identity. He has created the Hip Hop Theatre Initiative in Undergraduate Drama and is a member of Theatre Without Borders, for which he was Co-Planner with Roberta Levitow of the 2005 Symposium, “The Future of International Theatre Exchange.” He is a past Chair of the Black Theatre Association Focus Group (ATHE), and recipient of both the Drama League's Special Interest Residency grant for his work in Paris with Monika Pagneux, Peter Brook's movement specialist, and of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Directors. He is currently editing
Across All Lines, an anthology of Hip Hop Theatre plays with critical commentary, for the Critical Performances Series, University of Michigan Press.
