About Dan
Dan is an award-winning producer, director, and playwright, who has worked in theatres around Canada, the US, Israel, and on London’s West End.
In the Fall of 2022, Dan joined Canada's newest commercial producer, More Entertainment, as a General Manager and Producer. He led their revival production of Rock of Ages, which played in Toronto's historic Elgin Theatre for 13 weeks and is set to tour Asia. Dan is currently the Artistic Director at Winnipeg Jewish Theatre. He began his tenure in January 2023, as the youngest AD in a professional (PACT) theatre in the country.
Dan continues to work with Olive Branch Theatre, a professional production company based in Toronto, dedicated to creating top-quality live entertainment. There, he has staged a variety of critically acclaimed musicals and cabarets. His productions were praised as "valiant" and "complex". He also staged some of his original work, including the award-winning drama Train for Two (based on his family’s true story in the Holocaust). Later, the show went on to tour the United States. Throughout the pandemic, Olive Branch launched several initiatives to support vulnerable sector communities, and Dan is incredibly proud of the immense impact these projects had during such challenging times.
As a playwright and lyricist, Dan is currently developing several projects that he hopes to share on the stage or the screen in the near future.
He is a graduate of the University of Toronto, holding an Honours Bachelor in Theatre and International Relations, and an MA in Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies. In his academic pursuits, Dan's research focussed on Jewish theatre as well as the intersection between politics, economics, and performance. Dan loves travelling, reading, and co-raising his cat Smoosh with his partner Dana!
Dan Petrenko brings a youthful enthusiasm to his role as the new WJT artistic director
At the age of 24, Dan Petrenko became the youngest artistic director of any of the member theaters of the Canadian Professional Association of Canadian Theaters (PACT) when he was hired this past November as the new artistic director of Winnipeg Jewish Theatre...
By Bernie Bellan | The Jewish Post and News
Playful plans; New artistic director of WJT hopes to engage younger audiences, stage musicals
By Ben Waldman | The Winnipeg Free Press
In 1997, the Asper Jewish Community Campus opened on Doncaster Street in Winnipeg. The next year, Dan Petrenko was born in Givatayim, an Israeli city east of Tel Aviv. About a quarter-century later, Petrenko and the JCC are due to meet: he is the new artistic director of the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre, housed at the campus’s Berney Theatre...
Winnipeg Jewish Theatre names new artistic director
The Winnipeg Free Press