Daniel Bye

Daniel Bye is a theatre maker from Middlesbrough. As writer-performer his award-winning, internationally-touring shows include Going Viral, Arthur, The Price of Everything, How to Occupy an Oil Rig and Instructions for Border Crossing. With Chumbawamba co-founder Boff Whalley he creates large-scale participatory performance installations, with projects including Everything There Ever Was (East Durham Creates), Wonderstruck (People United/Manchester Museum) and We’re Here (Somerset House). Dan and Boff’s These Hills Are Ours, a theatre piece about their shared love of running up big hills, toured in Summer 2021 and throughout 2022. His storytelling tour inspired by the forgotten grass-roots history of a town, Story Hunt, was created in bespoke versions for Stockton, Gateshead, Margate (for Fuel), Berwick, Northampton (for Royal and Derngate), Heckmondwike and Middlesbrough. In early 2016 the follow-up to Story Hunt, Tiny Heroes, premiered in Exeter (the Bike Shed) and north Devon (Beaford Arts), before touring rural and community venues nationwide.

Work for young people and families includes Error 404 (writer-performer, Polka), We’re Stuck (devisor-performer, One Tenth Human), Full of Noises (writer-director, Leeds Playhouse) and Sleeping Beauty (writer-director, Dukes Theatre).

As director he regularly collaborates with other artists, including Aliki Chapple, Holly Gallagher and Aidan Moesby, to facilitate and realise their projects. Further directing credits include Red Ladder, Leeds Playhouse and Silver Tongue Theatre.

Dan is a regular visiting lecturer at the University of Lancaster, an Associate Artist of One Tenth Human, and a member of the Fence network of international playwrights, dramaturgs and theatre makers.

ARC acts as Daniel’s producer and after managing the These Hills Are Ours tour, is currently supporting the development of some new projects.

‘ARC’s support for my work has transformed my capacity and reach as an artist. I performed over four times as often in my first year with them as in the years before, at a wider range of venues, nationally and internationally. My work was seen by more than six times as many people and funded by a greatly widened range of partners. The number of opportunities and commissions coming in has more than trebled.

As a venue, ARC understand the needs and challenges of touring in the contemporary climate, which it is hard to imagine being matched by equal success or sensitivity by any other independent producer. And as a Teesside venue, it is hard to imagine a better fit for developing the work, profile and reach of a Teesside theatre-maker.’