He served as the artistic director at the Asian American theatre company, East West Players (EWP), in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, California until 2016.
[1] Of Chinese American descent,[2] his father was an accountant at Shell Oil,[3] and his mother was a clerk for the local District Court of Honolulu.
[1] Encouraged by his oldest brother, Peter, to attend a mainland college, Dang enrolled at the University of Southern California in the fall of 1976.
[1] When he was a senior, Jack Rowe, a professor (and later associate dean and director of the BFA Acting program) at the USC School of Dramatic Arts,[1] warned him that mainland film, television, and theatrical productions were not inclusive, and he would have a tough time making a living as an actor.
He paid $35 a month in dues, which allowed him to take acting classes with the troupe's founders and permitted him to audition for EWP productions.
[5] Dang is married to Darrel Cummings, retired chief of staff at the Los Angeles LGBT Center.
When work was scarce for Cruz in 2002, Cummings (then with the National LGBTQ Task Force) hired him to give him an income.