Danielle Drees writes about bodies, labor, and politics in the performing arts. 

Her first book, Sleep with Spectators: Feminist Performance and Practice, is forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press in 2026. Sleep with Spectators reveals the unexpected role sleep has played in the past fifty years of feminist theater and performance art. In fall 2025, Danielle will present on Sleep with Spectators for Cambridge University’s Women’s Art Collection and as a plenary speaker at the American Society for Theater Research annual meeting.

Danielle's scholarly writing appears in Signs, the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Frontiers, Performance Research, Theatre Journal, and the forthcoming Palgrave textbook Teaching Writing in Theatre and Performance Studies. (Please email for copies of these articles and reviews.)

Danielle’s next project is a biography of the genderfluid 17th-century performer Mary Frith, better known as Moll Cutpurse. Danielle has produced public-facing scholarship on Moll’s world for the Dead Ladies Project and the Map of Early Modern London.

Danielle received her PhD with distinction in Theatre and Performance from Columbia University and holds degrees from Cambridge University and Harvard College. She is affiliated faculty in Writing, Literature & Publishing at Emerson College and a visiting lecturer on Theater, Dance & Media at Harvard. Danielle talks about art with learners of all ages at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. 

Write Danielle an email here.