Bio & Contact
Dara Weinberg, (put an “@” between daraweinberg and gmail.com) formerly of Los Angeles, currently of the planet. Freelance director, playwright, writer and editor at large.
As a director and choreographer, she works with the improvised chorus. In her work, all the members of the ensemble have the ability to play any or all the roles, share the text, and improvise movement as a chorus or as individuals.
She most recently directed THE MARRIAGE OF HEAVEN AND HELL, an improvised dance play based on William Blake’s poetry, at the Met Theatre Company. Other Los Angeles directing credits include A VAST WRECK and BRANDOHEAD at Theatre of NOTE, where she is an associate member. She assistant directed the premiere of MY WANDERING BOY (dir. Bill Rauch) at South Coast Rep. At the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, she assistant directed ROMEO AND JULIET (dir. Bill Rauch) and TARTUFFE (dir. Peter Amster). While at OSF, she also led workshops on the improvised chorus for acting company members. She assistant directed GOLDA’S BALCONY at TheatreWorks (dir. Aaron Davidman) and will assistant direct LYDIA at the Denver Center (dir. Juliette Carrillo)
She directed and choreographed the premiere of Helma Fries’s anti-war play HUMAN BOMBING for the Berliner Compagnie, a political theater ensemble in Kreuzberg. HUMAN BOMBING, the company’s first experiment with choruses, proved so successful that the production has toured Germany every year since 2003.
She choreographed DON GIOVANNI and THE THREEPENNY OPERA for the West Bay Opera Company, and AC/DC: A DANCE SPECTACULAR for Serial Killers at the Sacred Fools Theatre Company.
She has directed numerous readings and workshops. She holds a BA from Stanford University.
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Dara was born in Panorama City, CA in 1982. She grew up in Calabasas and Woodland Hills. She’s a third-generation Los Angeles resident from a very academic family: her parents are a professor and a librarian, and her brother is a scientist. She got hooked on theater while studying TWELFTH NIGHT at the Topanga Canyon Theatricum Botanicum as a kid. The passion became an obsession watching Ted Walch’s productions at Harvard-Westlake, where her brother was a student. She continued to take acting classes until she was 16, and really sucked at them, when she became more interested in directing and playwriting: creating original adaptations of THE ODYSSEY and LYSISTRATA.
She went to Stanford, where she studied Comparative Literature (French & German), minored in Creative Writing, and wrote a 200-page rhyming thesis entitled “Time To Rhyme” on the development of rhyme in poetry and theater. She studied with Carl Weber, Harry Elam, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Richard Martin, Roland Greene, Cherrie Moraga, and Gabrielle Calvocoressi. At Stanford, she directed FAUST, CLYTEMNESTRA SPEAKS / CASSANDRA RESPONDS, and GILGAMESH, before crashing and burning in a sea of credit card debt and lack of talent.
Regrouping at a summer workshop run by the San Francisco Mime Troupe, she met Helma Fries of the Berliner Compagnie - who happened to be interested in methods of staging the Greek Chorus. She led her first workshop on the chorus for professional actors at the Mime Troupe.
Months later, at the bewildered and idiotic age of 21, she directed the premiere of Helma Fries’s anti-war play HUMAN BOMBING for the Berliner Compagnie, a political theater ensemble in Kreuzberg. She went all Robert Wilson on it and choreographed every gesture. The production has toured Germany every year since 2003.
Returning to the US, she graduated and came back to Los Angeles to teach workshops on improvised choral theater to high school students - having gotten sick of choreography, and more interested in incorporating actors’ impulses into the chorus. She wanted to find a way for the prevailing ideology of Meisner training, and the notion of “being in the moment,” to co-exist with choral work.
This work led to multiple workshops in high schools and in professional theaters, to several Los Angeles directing credits (see above) and to a two-year job assisting Bill Rauch, as his personal assistant and eventually also as his assistant director, which took her to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival as Bill took over from Libby Appel as the artistic director.
After her work with Bill ended, she moved her home base to the SF Bay Area to continue freelancing as a playwright and director.
October 4, 2007 at 7:30 pm
ilovedara
October 16, 2007 at 7:28 am
Dara, you kick butt. Just wanted to say hi and that well, you kick butt.
December 7, 2007 at 3:34 pm
I hadn’t read your words before. I can hear you speaking, it’s nice since you’re so far away. You write well, very well.
Phillip
December 8, 2007 at 6:39 am
Ah dear Dara, luck, to quote Mae West, had nothing to do with it. You earned that job by dint of hard and smart work, over several years, for people who were bright enough to recognize your talent and wise enough to utilize you to aid them to do their jobs better and more easily. Give yourself the credit you deserve. You didn’t get the job because you wear Manolo Blahnik shoes or carry a Louis Vuitton handbag. It’s not because you car pooled with Steven Speilberg’s kids. You’re very good at what you do, period.
The Nubian Prince
December 9, 2007 at 1:00 am
Thanks, Phil, Andres, Neiman. I’m all of your biggest fans too. Colorado sends you love.
And Phil, I do think luck has something to do with it, because - well, I may have worked hard, I have, but some of this is all just too good to be true.
Just my opinion.
My teacher used to say that the best actor in the world is doing dinner theater in Kansas somewhere. So I try not to let the fact that I have jobs that I like indicate to me that I necessarily deserve them. Do you know what I mean? It’s one thing to know you can do it, but there’s always someone else who can, too. So there is luck. And I have been lucky.
I want to keep that in mind.
December 9, 2007 at 1:29 am
While I see your point? I am of the opinion that as Louis Pasteur so aptly pointed out, “Luck favors the mind that is prepared.” And it’s not too good to be true. It IS true. I love being pompous AND right.
One more thing? You have been traveling too much, Dara. Today is the 8th not the 9th. ~winks~ Sunday is the 9th.
That is all
Phillip
December 9, 2007 at 1:41 am
You’re right, and yes, you’re pompous
And I think the clock in my computer, or WordPress, is messed up - I don’t set the dates. But I’ll fix it.
December 9, 2007 at 5:05 pm
Guess what? Guess what? we had a full house last night! I couldn’t watch the show so a PAYING audience member could have a seat! I’m so excited, I just can’t hide it! I’m about to lose control and I, sorry, I got carried away there. Ron came too and liked it a lot.
K, bye
Phil
December 28, 2007 at 7:17 am
Yikes! You are getting your share of snow, aren’t you? Stay warm, dear
Phil
January 11, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Hey Dara, I had breakfast with Ron today. He’s well and spoke highly of you. Here’s a URL for a blog I read this morning. Let me know what you think?
February 3, 2008 at 9:54 am
Oh Dara, kind, sweet, talented Dara! We hardly knew ye!
We had fantastic previews, a superb opening, and the show rolls along gathering steam! And I owe much of it to you! You were just the right addition to our process, bringing a tireless sense of service and wisdom to Juliette and myself. I don’t think I even understood just how deep your contribution was to Lydia until you left. And we sorely missed you. Thank you for your awesome work, your patience with this numbskull playwright, and your keen heart in our warmest hours.
Forgive me if I ever took you for granted or condescended to you. I just never realized the extent of your engagement and service. Formidable and unforgettable.
Now I am back in SF rehearsing the next one- no time to savor the afterglow of success- and staying up late again making revisions. And I find myself thinking… what would Dara do? That may be the mantra of ‘08.
Dara, tell me, are you on a Mac or pc? Do you have i-Tunes? Where in heavens name are you now?
sending you love from the City of Love,
O.
February 19, 2008 at 8:51 pm
This is my partner in crime. Our crime spree is on a hiatus. We don’t steal no money. We rob people of a couple hours of their time.
I don’t exaggerate. I am not gonna claim that I would kill for Dara. But I would kick your fucking ass for her.
February 21, 2008 at 10:43 pm
I love you, Octavio. I find myself thinking “What would Octavio do?” quite often. Especially with this Antioch college strike project. Remind me to tell you more about it - it’s fascinating.
February 21, 2008 at 10:44 pm
We rob them of their time…and we give it to the poor of King Richard’s England. Miss you, Terry T.
April 8, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Dude. I found you! (This is Jessica Fisher, now Jessica Zeckel, who you used to hang out with in middle school!) I have been searching Facebook for you and couldn’t find you so I decided to google you, and look what the first link was! The other day I pulled a long-forgotten jacket out of storage and stuck my hand in the secret inner pocket only to find my ticket stub from going to see Lysistrata at Harvard Westlake. I’m so glad I found your blog, it’s great to see what you’ve been up to for the past, oh, ten years or so . . .
April 9, 2008 at 12:53 am
Hi Jessica! It’s so awesome that you found me! Sorry I’m not on Facebook, I find it oddly terrifying. So good to hear from you! I emailed you…please let me know what’s going on with you? I think it’s fantastic that you still have a LYSISTRATA ticket stub. That play never stops having power in my life.