DANIEL is a playwright, composer and lyricist living in Brooklyn. His musical, To Paint the Earth, written with composer Jonathan Portera, won the Richard Rodgers Development Award, was selected for the New York Musical Theatre Festival (37 Arts) and recently was part of From Page to Stage at the Southwark Playhouse in London. His musical Spandex, about competitive aerobics in the 80s, was recently released as an audio musical with a sound team led by Tony-Award-Winning sound designer, Kai Harada. Daniel’s play, Hee-Haw: It’s a Wonderful Li_e (Nuyorican Poets Cafe), a counter-telling of the holiday classic, was called a “delightful surprise” by the New York Times. Daniel's other works have been presented at La Mama, Long Wharf Theater, the 92nd Street Y’s Steinhardt Center, and 13th Street Rep, and and have been published in three editions of Applause Books' BEST AMERICAN SHORT PLAYS: 2008, 2010, and 2014. Daniel served as a Jonathan Larson Memorial Fellow at the Dramatists Guild and is a MacDowell fellow. He holds an MFA from NYU Tisch and a BA from Yale. Daniel was filmed in front of a live studio audience.
PUBLICATION
Best American Short Plays 2013-2014, 2009-2010 and 2007-2008 editions
Applause Books, edited by Barbara Parisi.
“Alt-Visions” presented at Nuyorican Poets Cafe, 2014
“What Really Happened: starring Abraham Lincoln” Dixon Place, 2010
“A Glorious Evening” 13th Street Rep, 2007
AWARDS
Richard Rodgers Development Award: To Paint the Earth
Academy of Arts and Letters. Stephen Sondheim, Panel Judge Chair
MacDowell Fellow
Jonathan Larson Memorial Fellow, Dramatists Guild
THEATRE PRODUCTIONS
Spandex the Musical (Book, Music, Lyrics; Audio Musical-in development, Minnsky Theatre, 777 Off-Broadway)
You’ll have to bring your own legwarmers, but the show will take care of warming your heart.
~ Jay Gabler, City Pages
Writers Daniel F. Levin and Annie Grunow have skillfully crafted a mix of seemingly heavy themes that blend into terrifically entertaining storytelling… Julian Blackmore and Levin’s music… spirit forth an ’80s club scene atmosphere that surges with vibrancy in the Minnsky space. That space has never been used quite like this.
~ John Townsend, Lavender Magazine
“Really great!... funny, and the music was super catchy…Well put together."
~ Robert Lopez (cowriter of "Avenue Q" and "Book of Mormon")
To Paint the Earth (Book & Lyrics; Southwark Playhouse, Workshop, London)
“To Paint the Earth” is a remarkable achievement. Daniel Levin and Jonathan Portera have managed to convey through the characters they have created and the story they enact, a gripping sense of what life was like in the last days of the Warsaw Ghetto during World War Two...This unusual and adventurous musical is a deeply moving experience."
~ Sheldon Harnick, Lyricist of “Fiddler on the Roof”
“To Paint the Earth” represents something of a rarity in the festival: a serious musical. It stares unblinkingly at abject fear, abject denial … and devastating compromise.
~ Anita Gates, The New York Times, September 30, 2008
The score by Jonathan Portera (music) and Daniel Frederick Levin (book and lyrics) throbs with dramatic urgency, using frequent syncopation. The plaintive melodies of more introspective songs such as "Sewing Song" (beautifully performed by Robin Skye as Mona’s mother) and "Time" convey the high stakes of the lives of these people, but the authors skillfully skirt sentimentality.
~ Susan Reiter, Edge, October 1, 2008
Luna Park (Book; Tristan Bates Theatre, London)
Selected for “From Page to Stage” festival alongside European premiere of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “21 Chump Street.”
Hee-Haw: It’s a Wonderful Li_e (Nuyorican Poets Cafe, NYC December, 2009)
AND SOMETIMES YOU GET LUCKY Go to enough holiday shows and you begin to think that making good seasonal theater is impossible, unless you stumble into any of these delightful surprises...Mr. Levin takes an inventive look at how things shook out for a secondary character in that film, Sam Wainwright...Turns out not everything ended up so rosily in Bedford Falls.
~ Neil Genzlinger, The New York Times, Dec. 11th, 2009