Danitra Vance (July 13, 1954 – August 21, 1994) was an American comedian and actress who was a cast member on the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL) during its eleventh season in 1985.
Raised in Chicago's South Side, Vance performed for The Second City, was an "Off-Broadway favorite," and was the first Black woman of the primary SNL cast and, following Denny Dillon and along with Terry Sweeney, one of the first LGBT members, though she was not out to the public during her lifetime. In high school she was active in theater and was a member of the debate team. She later attended National College of Education She then moved to London to study at Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, where she was classically trained in Shakespeare and earned a MFA. In a review of the piece that ran in The Village Voice, theater critic Alisa Solomon wrote that Vance's comedy "stabs while it entertains, actually causing a physical catch in your laughter, as she undercuts every pose she takes... Beginning with and then undermining stereotypes, Vance creates an unsettling tension among stereotypes, reality, and the conditions that create stereotypes." Among the characters she performed in the show were several that she later developed on Saturday Night Live – including teenaged mother Cabrini Green Jackson and Flotilla Williams (who performs a version of Romeo and Juliets balcony scene from her fire escape).
Saturday Night Live
Vance was the first Black woman to become an SNL repertory player in 1985 (after Yvonne Hudson's tenure as a featured player previously); though Vance's sexual orientation was not public knowledge until her death. Her casting alongside Terry Sweeney (the show's first openly gay male cast member) was also the first time that Saturday Night Live had two gay cast members.
Vance joined the SNL cast during a time of great transition and turbulence for the show, and she became frustrated over repeatedly having characters stereotypical of young Black women written for her. That same year, Vance was also in the original cast of George C. Wolfe's The Colored Museum; she would go on to reprise some of her performances therein for a 1991 Great Performances restaging of the play.
Vance was the second female lead, opposite Nancy Allen, in Limit Up, in which she played Nike, a guardian angel on assignment for God (played by Ray Charles). She had small roles in The War of the Roses and Little Man Tate and a more significant role in Jumpin' at the Boneyard, for which she was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Female at the 8th Independent Spirit Awards.
Death
Diagnosed with breast cancer in 1990, Vance underwent a single mastectomy and incorporated the experience into a solo skit, "The Radical Girl's Guide to Radical Mastectomy". She expanded on her experiences in a second autobiographical show, titled Pre-Shrunk, which was to be performed at The Public Theater. However, she was unable to perform as her cancer recurred in 1993. She died of the disease the following year in Markham, Illinois, with her age incorrectly cited as 35. She had shaved five years off.