Biography
Dominic Taylor is a Los Angeles based writer and director whose work has been seen all over the country. The Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre and New York Theatre Workshop have all commissioned Taylor as a writer. His play, I Wish You Love, premiered at Penumbra Theatre, and was produced at both The Kennedy Center and at Hartford Stage in 2012. Hype Hero was developed at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center in Waterford, Conn., and was produced at Brown University in Fall 2014. His written work includes Wedding Dance and Personal History, both produced at the Kennedy Center by the African Continuum Theatre and published by Playscripts.com. His play Upcity Service(s) is included in the anthology Seven More Different Plays, edited by Mac Wellman (Broadway Play Publishing). As a director he is also sought after. In 2016, directed Alan Berks play with music Complicated Fun at the History Theatre in St. Paul, MN. In 2015, Taylor directed Alice Childress' Trouble in Mind at Augsburg College in St. Paul. In 2014, he re-envisioned and directed a classic of the Harlem Renaissance, The Purple Flower, at Boston's Factory Theatre, and incorporated shadow puppets as his characters. His directing projects have been as varied as the opera Fresh Faust at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston; The Negroes Burial Ground at The Kitchen in New York City; Destiny and Uppa Creek at Manhattan's Dixon Place; Ride the Rhythm in the Hip-Hop Theatre Festival in Washington, D.C., and The Wiz at the University of Minnesota's Rarig Center in Minneapolis. He also reimagined and restaged the Black Nativity for Penumbra Theatre. His next directing project will be a commercial musical, Selassie, which he will also write. He is an alumnus member of New Dramatists. He received his bachelor's and master of fine arts degree from Brown University and is a member of Stage Directors and Choreographers, a board member of the Givens Foundation for African American Literature and an associate artistic director of America-in-Play. He is the former associate artistic director of Penumbra Theatre Company. He has taught at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, Bard College, City University of New York; Columbia College of Chicago; Bennington College and Brown University. At present he is a Full Professor at UCLA, School of Theater, Film and Television.
