Actor.

Originally from the South-Side of Chicago, Danyelle Monson is happy to be a working artist. She is a multi-hyphenated Actor, Writer, Dancer, and Femcee. Stage credits include: *Marie Antoinette and the Magical Negroes (The Story Theatre), Othello (Women’s Theatre Festival), The Projects (Stage Left Theatre), Titus Andronicus (Haven Theatre), and Countess Dracula (Otherworld Theatre). Her screen credits include The Chi (Showtime), Cottage Grove (Short Film), and The BLACKSiDE (Webseries).  You may also see her work while scrolling on your social media via her latest commercial ad for the Abrysvo Vaccine (Social Media Ad)! In addition to Acting, she is an avid dancer with experience in African dance, modern dance, ballet, and jazz dance styles! Dance credits include: Metamorphosis (Body Confidence for Queens) and R & Burlesque: The Mixtape (Nytes in Harlem Production Co.) Danyelle is thrilled to be able to perform and dedicates each performance to her beloved niece Takiya Holmes. She spends her free time listening to Afrobeats and Dancehall music, while dancing around her living room. She is represented by DDO Artist Agency.  (*) indicates Jeff Award Win. 

Dancer.

Danyelle Monson has been dancing since before she could walk! She began taking dance classes since high school and continued to do so in college. In college, she was one of the first acting majors to be featured in the Dance at Illinois Fall and Spring concerts, an opportunity that is usually exclusive to dance majors. She has 3 years of training in Umfundalai West African Dance technique and she is also familiar with modern dance, contemporary dance, afro- fusion, soca, ballet, and hip-hop dance styles. Please enjoy a clip of her work below!

Writer.

Sunshine and Broken Glass, Or; lather, rinse, Repeat is a movement-based peek into the feelings of love, beauty, self- discovery, failure, fear, disaster, exhaustion, grief, desperation, love, humor, light, and darkness. It is a work that I was in process with for three years 2015-2018. It’s a show that came to me in the form of visions, dreams, voices, and poems during various periods of my life throughout those three years. My vision for this piece of art was Bronx Gothic meets Hamlet meets Metamorphoses meets Yerma meets Joe Turner’s Come and Gone. I chose to treat this piece as my senior thesis project, and spent three months devising it. Finally after three months of failure, and three years of fear, I work-shopped it for three performances in April of 2018.

This semi-autobiographical piece has one character named “I”  who behaves as society would expect she would. She laughs when she wants to cry, she pretends to be happy when she is not, and she is draped in layers of clothing in an attempt to hide herself, as society often expects plus sized women to do. But, as the show progresses, the audience gets to see her journey from fake happiness, through the five stages of grief in order to reach a place of self discovery. We physically see her shed layers and choose to go towards  the light in life, like a sunflower who turns toward the sun as she blooms. We see character “I” rise from the ground up, and try to find out what it truly means to be happy.