Dan Kirsch papers

Daniel Leander Kirsch was born in Marshfield, Wisconsin on August 25, 1953 to Jerome and Mary Lou Kirsch. Kirsch began his work in theater in the 1970s and received his first major job of Managing Director of the Zeiterion Theatre in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1982. He then become the Administrative Director of the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania in 1985, where he remained until he made the move to Charlotte in 1989 to become the director of the Charlotte Shakespeare Company.

Upon Kirsch's arrival in Charlotte, he founded One Voice Chorus, a gay, lesbian and gay-affirmative chorus, along with four others. In 1991, he then became the editor of Q-Notes, an LGBTQ arts, entertainment and news publication based in Charlotte, produced a major conference for PFLAG and helped found the Charlotte Business Guild (now the LGBT Chamber of Commerce). In 1994, Dan brought NC Pride to Charlotte for the first time and hosted the Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses (GALA) Leadership Summit in the city. In 1995, Kirsch founded and served as Executive Director of OutCharlotte, an annual LGBT cultural festival that includes fundraising events, FilmOut, OutMedia and ReachOut. In 2003, Dan built and opened the first Lesbian and Gay Community Center in Charlotte on Central Avenue. In 2004, he helped spearhead the efforts to create the Charlotte Lesbian & Gay Fund at the Foundation for the Carolinas, which has awarded over a million dollars in assistance to LGBT organizations and programs. Beginning in 2005, Kirsch moved from Charlotte to San Diego to serve as Artistic & Executive Director of Diversionary Theatre. In 2012, Dan moved to Fredericksburg, Virginia to become the Cultural Arts Director of the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia. While there, he commissioned the play Redder Blood and established the ReelAbilities Film Festival in Northern Virginia.

In 2016, Kirsch returned to Charlotte and helped lead Time Out Youth's capital campaign to raise 3 million dollars for its home on Monroe Road. He produced a reading of Dear Harvey, played the role of Uncle Willie in the Philadelphia Story at Theater Charlotte and founded Charlotte LGBT Elders. At the time of his death, Dan served as Interim Executive Director of The Choir School at St. Peter's. Dan Kirsch died in Charlotte on February 21, 2020, a great loss for Charlotte's LGBT community and the city at large.

Source: https://hankinsandwhittington.com/tribute/details/178650/Daniel-Kirsch/obituary.html https://hubcitytimes.com/2020/03/30/42741/