“Helmer Danny Schmitz directs his cast to begin over the top and rocket skywards from there….”

            VARIETY

Danny Schmitz spent his early years in a garden-level apartment amidst the malty aroma that wafted across the street from the Schmidt’s Brewery in the heart of St. Paul’s Rockin’ East Side. His first fore into show business was at nine years of age when he wrote, directed, produced and starred in the one-man shows he staged in his little sister’s bedroom with her as the sole, captive audience member. Schmitz received a Westinghouse cassette tape recorder on his tenth birthday and immediately went into production on “The Victim,” a series of radio plays that would reach only a slightly broader audience.

“...Danny Schmitz, the directorial mastermind...”

            LOS ANGELES TIMES

Schmitz’s formative years found him in the Twin Cities suburb of Roseville, where he continued to develop, create and produce theatrical and themed entertainment in the form of back yard plays and Muscular Dystrophy Carnivals. But his first big break came when he approached his sixth grade teacher, Mr. Decker, and asked him to direct an on-stage version of “The Wizard of Oz.” The production would take place on the Falcon Heights Elementary School gymnasium stage and Danny would assign himself the lead role of the Scarecrow and credit himself as Executive Producer.

“Schmitz displays a knack for inventive irreverence and mischievous surprises…”

            DRAMALOGUE

Grades seven through twelve saw a whirlwind of school plays and black and white living room video projects too numerous to mention. During this time, an after-school improvisational performance program transformed Danny and dominated his day-to-day existence. Improv became almost a religious fixation, even smacking a little “culty” to those in his inner circle. After all, these were the days of the Patty Hearst kidnapping and the beginning of a scary new late-night television show called Saturday Night Live.

One of the Top Ten People to Watch

            SKYWAY NEWS

Following a stint in the theater department at the University of Wisconsin, Danny Schmitz co-founded an Improv Troupe called City Champs Comedy Theater, which had a contract to produce comedy shows in city parks with the lakes of Minneapolis as a backdrop. The sketches were hilarious. One crowd favorite was about a teenage girl who spent so much time tanning that, despite all her mother’s warnings, she literally turned into one big freckle. Though the press remained conspicuously silent that summer, City Champs was reviewed on the spot by one eight-year-old girl in the crowd as being, “Oh, real perfessional.”

His facial expressions are priceless…”

            NIGHTLIFE/SHOWCASE

“Schmitz gives a full-out performance and works every available nuance to his lines…”

            GAY & LESBIAN TIMES

Further rooting himself in the world of Improv comedy, Schmitz spent the next several years writing, performing, directing and producing sketch comedy shows, traveling the Midwest and east coast with the groups Every Mother’s Nightmare, Theatersportz and The Riot Act and got more training with Chicago’s Improv Olympic. He joined the resident acting company at Dudley Rigg’s Brave New Workshop and on his nights off, concurrently foraged into the world of solo performance, developing his one-man show, “The Chronicles of a Man Lost in a Terrible Suspended Animation Accident,” which won a Jones Commission Playwriting Award.

“…a deft performer who moves easily from character to character…”

            MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE

“Schmitz’s ensemble leaves sanity in the dust…the audience is kept laughing to the risk of asphyxiation.”

            LAWEEKLY

“The term ‘underground comedy’ barely scratches the surface of the outrageous going-on in Peterson Park.”

            TWIN CITIES READER

As founder and Artistic Director of The Bryant Lake Bowl Theater in Minneapolis, Schmitz curated a schedule of up to 50 performances per month, including national and local musical acts, standup comedians, theater groups, children’s shows, performance artists, dancers, variety acts and filmmakers. The Bryant Lake Bowl remains a major Minneapolis entertainment destination to this day and has provided a home for many of Schmitz’s own creations, including, “Temp Trilogy,” “Peterson Park” and “Fazor 1,000,” which were long runs of loosely-scripted, staged soap operas.

“…The best bit is Danny Schmitz’s dead-on caricature of Robert Bly…”

            CITY PAGES

“…Schmitz does a dead-on parody of a TV true crime show host…”

            MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE

“…Within five minutes of the play’s opening I was giggling. By the show’s end, my sides hurt…”

               GAY & LESBIAN TIMES

Danny first discovered the allure of warmer climates when he earned a spot in the national finals of “The Southern Comfort Team Comedy Challenge” at the Comedy Store on the Sunset Strip. He returned to Southern California performing in “Children of Paradise, Shooting a Dream,” on tour with Theatre de la Jeune Lune at the La Jolla Playhouse. It was on this trip that Schmitz realized that Los Angeles and Theater 911’s “Bad Seed” were ready for each other.

“Danny Schmitz is the star of this extremely funny sendup…”

               LOS ANGELES READER

“Schmitz turns Anderson’s play into comic madness…”

               HOLLYWOOD INDEPENDENT

“This is high camp at its best…”

                LOS ANGELES READER

A few years before his trip to California, Schmitz had co-founded Theater 911 for the purpose of quickly installing improv shows into venues that became available due to sudden closures or cancellations. Theater 911’s second show was a sendup of the 1950’s play and B Movie “Bad Seed,” by Maxwell Anderson. With only two weeks to get the show up, Schmitz tapped his talents as producer and director and later played lead character, eight-year-old murderess Rhoda Penmark. The show was a grand slam, delighting sold-out audiences for years on end and created an unprecedented Minneapolis media frenzy.

“Rhoda is played with macho vigor by Danny Schmitz…”

            LAWEEKLY

Critic’s Choice/Best of the Weekend: “Hilarious camp revival…”

             LOS ANGELES TIMES

“You’ll never see a funnier ‘Bad Seed’ than this…”

              DRAMALOGUE

Then one January day, Schmitz headed a caravan of eight of his Minnesota actor pals on a trip out west for a run of “Bad Seed” in California. The group left behind sub-zero temps for a six-week West Hollywood run. Schmitz was right; LA was ready for Theater 911’s “Bad Seed.” The LA Weekly gave it Pick of the Week as well as the award for Best Comedy Ensemble. The Los Angeles Times declared it Critic’s Choice and Best of the Weekend many weeks running, so the group had no choice but to relocate when the run became open-ended.

“One of the most riotous plays to hit local stages…”

            CITY PAGES

“Nonstop hilarity…”

            LOS ANGELES TIMES

Danny currently lives in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles and continues to write, act, direct and produce plays and movies. He’s part of the producing team for the feature mockumentary, “Cook-Off!” which screened at the 2007 Aspen Comedy Arts Festival. As director, he continues to skewer classic plays including the lesbian horror play-turned-film, “The Children’s Hour” presented at the Blank Theater in Hollywood. In the same vein, Schmitz turned William Inge’s drama, “Come Back, Little Sheba,” into “Sheba VPE” (Valley Porn Edition), setting it in the dark world of the San Fernando Valley porn culture, gaining recommends from the LA Weekly and Backstage West.

“The entire cast finds moments of uproarious humor…”

            LAWEEKLY

As writer, Danny has co-created two full-length musicals including, “Oh Well,” an opera that looks at the aftermath in the days following the 1987 fall of Baby Jessica McClure down a well outside of Midland, Texas. Schmitz is currently in the process of completing, “I’m Sure,” a novel which tells the coming of age story of a normal midwestern thirteen-year-old boy whose life, to anyone who might dare to look closely enough, is anything but normal.