I became an ardent admirer of Dan Hoyle and his performance artistry in 2017, when his solo show The Real Americans had a month-long run at Mosaic. His theatrical modus operandi is genius. As I wrote in my rave review: “He traveled a hundred days to listen to ‘the real Americans,’ the folks left behind when the country’s bounty got divvied up. From what plain-spoken folks he met told him, Hoyle created a theater piece peopled with characters he rivetingly embodies on stage, switching voices, diction, and body language in an instant from one vivid impersonation to another.”
Nine years on, Hoyle returns to DC with another extraordinary solo show, Takes All Kinds, presented through November 22 by Voices Festival Productions. Like his prior performance pieces, Takes All Kinds is based on conversations Hoyle had with people in purple places — as diverse as a bar, a barber shop, a pool hall, a school board meeting. Hoyle has distilled what he heard from the folks he met into 70 not-to-be-missed minutes — sometimes rollickingly funny, sometimes profoundly on point. To my mind, Hoyle has honed his listen-then-enter-into-identification-with technique into the apotheosis of what the art of theater is for: to reveal and honor the humanity of others and, in doing so, of ourselves.
This is going to sound like hyperbole, but I believe that as we now witness on the national stage a massive empathy vacuum, Dan Hoyle is on to something this country needs more than ever: a habit of taking in another’s truth, not automatically otherizing. The show’s astutely perceptive director Aldo Billingslea said on opening night of the people Hoyle makes present to us through his empathic mimesis: “He becomes them; you become Dan.”
When I interviewed Hoyle nine years ago, he told me something so optimistic I had to catch my breath: “I think our brains have an evolutionary ability to take someone in on a deep level and then have that person be summoned within yourself. I think it’s latent within all of us.”
Attendance at Takes All Kinds is a master class in that faith.
As a production, the touring show is bare-bones simplicity. On a plainly lit, black-curtained stage, Hoyle enacts episodes with scene-setting sampling in between (David Hines’ sound design perfectly frames the show’s purpose). Along with jeans and sneakers, Hoyle wears a T-shirt that uncannily seems to be each of his characters’ clothing as he channels them.
And the pith and vinegar in what his characters say is astonishing. This, for instance, from an elderly Black woman: “Trump made it okay for all the racists to come out.” And this from a young white Phish fan: ‘Democracy is cool, man, enjoy it while it lasts.”
“Listening is not conceding,” another of Hoyle’s subjects says.
Before our eyes, Hoyle transmogrifies across races, genders, generations, geographies — always with appreciation, never as appropriation — and never does he hold anyone up for ridicule. He treats all his subjects as intrinsically important people he’d like us to meet.
Contrast that in your mind with what has become a national craze for derogating difference — a blood sport that is the linchpin of a political party’s propaganda — and you have some idea just how essential are the insights embodied and modeled in Dan Hoyle’s personal rescue mission of American democracy.
Running Time: 70 minutes, no intermission
Takes All Kinds plays through November 22, 2026, presented by Voices Festival Productions at Universalist National Memorial Church (where Spooky Action Theater performs), 1810 16th Street, NW, Washington, DC. Purchase tickets ($35, with under-30 tickets at $20) online.
Takes All Kinds
Written and performed by Dan Hoyle
Directed by Aldo Billingslea
Developed with Charlie Varon and Michael Moran
Sound Design by David Hines
SEE ALSO:
VFP to present acclaimed ‘Takes All Kinds’ true-life solo performance (news story, November 4, 2026)
