Playwright, screenwriter, director and university faculty Jeffrey Stanley is a 2011-12 PDC Playwright-in-Residence at PLAYS & PLAYERS THEATRE in Philadelphia. He wrote and performed his autobiographical, supernatural comic monologue BEAUTIFUL ZION: A BOOK OF THE DEAD to rave reviews in the 2011 Philly Fringe Festival.  Stanley's wartime drama TESLA'S LETTERS (Samuel French, 2000) premiered Off Broadway at The Ensemble Studio Theatre, had its UK premiere at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and went on to numerous other productions including the 2007 Chicago premiere.  He was commissioned by the Mill Mountain Theatre in Virginia to write the comedy MEDICINE, MAN (Createspace, 2008) which premiered on their main stage in 2003 and went on to a southwest premiere at Theatre Three Dallas.  Stanley wrote, directed and performed in his autobiographical comedy THE GOLDEN HORSESHOE: A LECTURE ON TRAGEDY in New York at the Gershwin Hotel and Don't Tell Mama.  He is a past president of the board of directors of the NEW YORK NEO-FUTURISTS (during his tenure the New York Neos won Best Ensemble at the New York Innovative Theatre Awards, were named Best Performance Artists by the Village Voice, People of the Year by nytheatre.com, and Arts Organization of the Year by Artists Forum magazine).  In New York he also directed a racially reimagined revival of Sam Shepard's THE GOD OF HELL, and his short plays HIGH TEA and STREPTOCOCCI: A LOVE STORY at Chashama, the Cherry Lane Annex and the Samuel French Short Play Festival.   

  Stanley wrote and directed the award-winning short film LADY IN A BOX starring Sarita Choudhury and licensed numerous times for international broadcast and distribution. He has won numerous screenwriting awards, and has either optioned or been hired to write screenplays for Peter Farrelly, Charles B. Wessler, GreeneStreet Films, Buckeye Entertainment, Cabin Creek Films, Andrew Lauren Productions, indie producer Matthew Myers and others.  He has been a judge and script analyst for the Script Savvy Monthly Screenwriting Competition and a script consultant for UK-based Initialize Films.

  He was a guest at Yaddo and a Copeland Fellow at Amherst College, and he has appeared as a guest writer in The New York Times, Time Out New York, New York Press, The Brooklyn Rail, and Hemispheres.  Stanley was a senior advisor to the editors of Boston University's Center for Millennial Studies book on apocalypse movements THE END THAT DOES (Equinox Books, 2006).

Stanley teaches undergraduate playwriting, screenwriting, theatre history and script analysis courses at New York University Tisch School of the Arts and Drexel University Westphal College of Media Arts & Design.  He has also taught in Croatia at The Imaginary Academy summer film and theatre workshop sponsored by the Soros Foundation.  Stanley holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch where he studied under playwright David Ives, and a BFA from Tisch in Film & Television Production with a minor in cultural anthropology.



Reviews, Features, Guest Writer and Media Appearances

New York Times New York Press Village Voice Time Out New York Show Business Weekly Back Stage City Paper, Philadelphia Philly Daily News Daily Pennsylvanian Rep Radio, Philadelphia Chicago Tribune Chicago Sun-Times Chicago Free Press

Time Out Chicago Dallas Morning News Dallas Observer BBC Radio Scotland MTV Desi India Abroad Times of India Brooklyn Rail Hemispheres Roanoke Times, Virginia NPR-WVTF Radio, Virginia NBC-WSLS Television, Virginia WJJS-FM, Virginia

Awards and Honors
PDC Playwright-in-Residence, Plays & Players Theatre, Philadelphia

Grant from The New School University  (collaboration with novelist John Reed) for Andy Warhol Media Project

Laurel Entertainment Award for Screenwriting Excellence (The Objectors)

Tennessee National Screenwriting Competition (The Objectors)

Nicholl Fellowship Finalist (The Objectors)

$20,000 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Prize (Lords of Light)

New York Picture Company Award for Best Dramatic Screenplay (Lords of Light)

Nuyorican Poets Cafe Fifth Night Series reading (Lords of Light)

Graduate Achievement Award (MFA; Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing, NYU Tisch School of the Arts)

Helena Rubenstein Award (partial scholarship; BFA in Film & Television Production;  NYU Tisch School of the Arts)

Residency at Yaddo

 Production Grant from EST-Alfred P. Sloan Foundation First Light Program (Tesla's Letters)

Tesla's Letters named one of the Ten Best Dramas of 1999 in Samuel French's 2000 Catalog of Plays for the New Millennium

Copeland Fellowship at Amherst College

AIVF-BVR Get It Made Award (Lady in a Box)
 
Commission from EST-Sloan First Light Program (Fishing With Tony and Joe)

 Commission from the Mill Mountain Theatre & the Norfolk-Southern Foundation (Medicine, Man)

Austin Film Festival Screenwriting Competition Finalist (Mirabelle)

LA International Film Festival Screenwriting Competition, 3rd Place (Brain On Fire)



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