Dane Eissler (they/he/it) is a theater maker, visual artist, educator, and creative researcher based in Philadelphia, PA.

Dane made their professional acting debut in B.R.A.T. Productions’ The Last Plot in Revenge (directed by Obie-winner John Clancy) shortly before earning a BA in Theatre from Rowan University, and soon after performed in Azuka Theatre’s Speech & Debate and co-directed EgoPo Classic Theater’s Stairs to the Roof with Lane Savadove. In Philadelphia, Dane has also worked with The Arrabalitos, Blind Faith Theater, and Cannonball Fest, while regularly collaborating with EgoPo for the past decade.

While living in Chicago, Dane was co-founding Artistic Director of A Dead Whale Productions, where they wrote, directed, designed, and performed in many original works, including a devised bouffon late-night show The Slather & Gibbs Show: LIVE. Their Chicago work extended to collaborations with Rough House Theater, Whiskey Rebellion Theatre, Gorilla Tango, Women of the Now, Living Room Vauntgardia, Windy City Performs, Megan Stalter’s Freakfest, and The Annoyance Theatre.

Dane is an Adjunct Professor at Rowan University and Temple University, where they teach classes in theater history and practice. As a 2024 recipient of the Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts, Dane studied puppetry in Indonesia with Papermoon Puppet Theatre and presented work in their international puppetry festival, Pesta Boneka. They are a member of the Trans+ Virtual Centre of Excellence, an international interdisciplinary research and advocacy group, and are currently pursuing a PhD in Creative Research through Transart Institute, in partnership with Liverpool John Moores University (UK).

Dane’s research uses the intersection of queer theory and their interdisciplinary performance and visual arts practices to explore how identity is formed, fragmented, and reimagined. Working across performance, painting, and puppetry, Eissler engages childlike play and imagination not only as an aesthetic, but as vital epistemological tools that resist linear narratives of selfhood. Their creative research considers how play and non-normative modes of expression can disrupt hegemonic structures that define identity as fixed, binary, or stable.

Drawing on queer theory, particularly concepts of performativity, fluidity, and liminality, Eissler’s work embraces uncertainty and change as valuable aspects of understanding ourselves and each other. Puppetry’s innate ability to hold opposites (i.e. object and living character) serves as a central metaphor and methodology in Eissler’s exploration of embodiment and disembodiment, control and surrender, presence and detachment. Painting and performance likewise function as laboratories where identity can be explored in spontaneous, emotional, and nonlinear ways, drawing on personal and collective memory, fantasy, trauma, and transformation.

Eissler’s creative research aims to make visible the invisible structures that govern how we see and experience ourselves and others. Their work invites viewers into a shared experience of unmaking and (re)making ideas of identity. Ultimately, Eissler’s research investigates how queerness, as an identity and a methodology, can open new pathways for empathy, liberation, and connection with ourselves and the world around us.