Gabriel J. Shanks
Executive Director
Gabriel Shanks joined The Drama League of New York in 2001, and has been its Executive Director since 2006. As both an artist and national arts leader, his work has been honored with commendations by the Washington, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the 1998 Outstanding Vision in the Theatre Award from the Theatre Project, numerous playwriting and directing honors, and a 2007 Obie Award for Peculiar Works Project, in honor of The Greenwich Village Fragments, which he co-directed.
Mr. Shanks has been involved in numerous international collaborations over the course of his 20-year career. In the 1990′s, he worked extensively in Hungary, producing and directing performances at RS9 Szinhas in Budapest with Katalin Laban and lecturing in the theatre departments of Szeged and Debrecen Universities. Two of his plays, “Echoes/Silence” and “Overanalysis,” have received translations and productions in Vienna, Tokyo and Buenos Aires, respectively. In 2009, he was asked to be part of a U.S. delegation to Bulgaria by the Center for International Theatre Development (CITD), which resulted in a five-year educational theatre exchange project between The Drama League of New York and Art Office in Sofia.
Mr. Shanks has previously held leadership positions at George Street Playhouse, Alliance Theatre Company, Baltimore Theatre Project and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. He received his B.A. in Theatre and Communications from Georgia State University and M.F.A. from Towson University.
Having directed over fifty theatrical productions in New York City, Seattle, Baltimore, Budapest, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, Philadelphia and Washington DC, his prose and play anthology, Glitterdirt, will be published in 2012. He is a company member of The Forge and The Rebecca Collective.
Roger T. Danforth
Deputy and Artistic Director
Roger Danforth has extensive credits as a producer, director, educator and arts administrator. Since 1996 he has been the artistic director of the Drama League Directors Project, the country’s foremost career development program for directors, which was honored with the Theatre Museum’s 2006 Award for Excellence in Theatre Arts Education.
Previously, Danforth spent seven years at The Cleveland Play House as associate producer and literary manager, and as acting artistic director for the 1994-95 season. He created their new play development series (garnering three awards from AT&T On Stage and the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays), and in 1995 he directed the world premiere of Jungle Rot by Seth Greenland which received the American Theatre Critics Association New Play Citation and was published in The Best Plays of 1995-1996. In addition to many productions at The Play house, other regional work includes the Kennedy Center, Florida Studio Theatre, Capital Rep, InterAct Theatre, the National Showcase of New Plays, Two River Theatre Company, Capital Rep and several productions for the Berkshire Theatre Festival. His New York directing credits include productions for Ensemble Studio Theatre, New York Shakespeare Festival, Blue Heron Theatre, Circle Rep, Westbeth Theatre Center, Urban Stages and Galt MacDermot’s musical The Human Comedy for the York Theatre Company. As a producer he has been on the artistic staffs of the National Alliance for Musical Theatre’s Festival of New Musicals, the WPA Theatre, Manhattan Ensemble Theater and Urban Stages.
Danforth has taught and done guest artist residencies at numerous colleges, and is currently on the directing faculty of Marymount Manhattan College and is the directing mentor of the O’Neill Theater Center’s National Puppetry Conference. He also served as a theatre panel adjudicator for the Michigan and Pennsylvania Arts Councils. Danforth holds an MFA in Directing from the School of Theatre at Florida State University and is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.
Trevor Tamashiro
Deputy and Program Director
Tom Sime
Member Services Manager
An accomplished professional with more than twenty years in the theatre industry, Mr. Sime recently worked for The Shubert Organization as Box Office Manager of the Little Shubert Theatre. In New York, he has also managed the box office of the Theatres at 45 Bleecker and is a prolific producer and playwright. Tom moved to New York in 2005 from Texas, where he had been the Managing Director of the Contemporary Theatre of Dallas. For over a decade, Tom was the Staff Theatre Critic for The Dallas Morning News. He received his BFA from Southern Methodist University.
Rob Weinstein
Business Manager
Mr. Weinstein has been in the arts for well over a decade, including positions at the Abingdon Theatre Company and at Culturefinder, an early internet website for arts patrons. He graduated from Penn State University.
Kara Weisenstein
Special Events Coordinator
Ms. Weisenstein joined The Drama League in 2011. A graduate of Northwestern University, her previous positions include Carol Fox and Associates, Broadway in Chicago, Stewart Talent Agency, and The Producing Office in New York City.
Toby Newman
Development Associate
