Dan trained as an actor receiving a Bachelors of Fine Arts from Tulane University (awarded Lippmann award for best student actor) and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of California, Los Angeles. He returned to Chicago in 1987 to study at The Second City and graduated from its training center in 1988. His training also includes the study of martial arts. He has taught classes in Multimedia theatre and authoring both at Studio Z and at Northwestern University.

As the Artistic Director of Studio Z, he has directed and developed numerous new plays. His plays have been presented both nationally and internationally at venues that include the American Conservatory Theatre (San Francisco) and the South Australian Writers Workshop. He was the Interactive Writer for Virtual Vaudeville: a project funded in part by the National Science Foundation. He has directed both scripted and improvisational works for Studio Z.

Dan was a selected participant for the National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage’s Building Blocks Conference in Washinton, D.C. He has presented his work at conferences of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), the Mid-American Theatre Conference (MATC) and was an invited presenter at the International Federation for Research in the Theater (IFTR) in St. Petersburg, Russia.