Jeffrey Stanley

Jeffrey Stanley (born September 3, 1967) is a playwright born in Roanoke, Virginia. He began writing in elementary school, and graduated from New York University Tisch School of the Arts Undergraduate Film (BFA) and Graduate Dramatic Writing (MFA) programs. He was also a resident at Yaddo. He currently teaches theatre and film writing courses at NYU Tisch, and at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

His first success came with the play "Tesla's Letters" (1999), a semi-autobiographical wartime drama set in the Balkans just before the Kosovo crisis, produced Off Broadway at The Ensemble Studio Theatre. The play has gone on to numerous productions and public readings around the world.

That was followed by "Medicine, Man" (2003), a dark comedy inspired by his grandmother's death in an Appalachian hospital. The play was commissioned by the Mill Mountain Theatre in Stanley's hometown where it premiered before going on to other productions. He has performed his darkly comic monologues "The Golden Horseshoe: A Lecture on Tragedy" and "Beautiful Zion: A Book of the Dead" in New York City (2003) and in the Philly Fringe (2011).

Stanley has also written and directed a number of short plays in New York, one of which he adapted into the award-winning short film "Lady in a Box" starring Sarita Choudhury (2006). He is a past president of the board of directors of the New York Neo-Futurists experimental theatre troupe, and he was a playwright-in-residence at Plays & Players Theatre in Philadelphia.

Stanley has written articles for Time Out New York, The New York Times, New York Press, Brooklyn Rail and Hemispheres. He was also a senior editorial advisor to the nonfiction book on apocalypse movements "The End That Does".

To learn more please visit http://www.brain-on-fire.com .