John Patrick Bray has written plays under grants from The National Endowment for the Arts and the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Louisiana, and has earned commissions from theatre companies and arts agencies around the country. He has been a Semifinalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Semifinalist for the Ashland New Play Festival, and Semifinalist for the Princess Grace Foundation Playwriting Award; a Finalist for the Kernodle Playwright Prize; and Winner of the Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights (for Friendly’s Fire, which led to its premiere at Barter Theatre). His plays have been developed at The Actors Studio, the Last Frontier Theatre Conference (Valdez Theatre Conference), The Word at the Road Theatre, Epic Rep. at The Players’ Club in NYC, Athens...
John Patrick Bray has written plays under grants from The National Endowment for the Arts and the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Louisiana, and has earned commissions from theatre companies and arts agencies around the country. He has been a Semifinalist for the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, Semifinalist for the Ashland New Play Festival, and Semifinalist for the Princess Grace Foundation Playwriting Award; a Finalist for the Kernodle Playwright Prize; and Winner of the Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights (for Friendly’s Fire, which led to its premiere at Barter Theatre). His plays have been developed at The Actors Studio, the Last Frontier Theatre Conference (Valdez Theatre Conference), The Word at the Road Theatre, Epic Rep. at The Players’ Club in NYC, Athens Playwrights’ Workshop, The New School for Drama’s Alumni Play Project, the SF Olympians Festival at EXIT Stage Left, The Greenhouse Ensemble's Playwriting Group, and the Midwest Dramatists Conference. His play Dead Movement was developed under a League of Independent Theatre of New York (LITNY) Rehearsal Grant at the Times Square Center. His plays have been produced or presented around the US (including productions with the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival, FRIGID NY, and Planet Connections Theatre Festivity all in NYC); and he has had productions or presentations of his plays in Canada, Italy, England, Ireland, and South Korea. His audio dramas have been produced by Gather by the Ghost Light, Lights Up! (Ensemble Theatre of Chattanooga), Shouting in the Evening, and Theatrical Shenanigans. His plays and monologues are published with Next Stage Press, Original Works Publishing, Off the Wall Plays, Heartland Plays; and in anthologies, literary journals, and online magazines. A collection of his shorts, Cart Before the Horse, has been published by Polychoron Press. Bray is the co-screenwriter of the BEA Award-Winning indie feature Liner Notes (based on his stage play) which was an official selection of the Woodstock Film Festival and Hoboken International Film Festival (finalist, Audience Choice Award). He wrote the screenplays for the shorts BARFLIES (Horror Realm Con) and the BEA-Award winning Escapism, which has been screened at a number of national and international festivals (on-site and online). Bray co-edited The Best American Short Plays 2015-2016 with William Demastes, and edited The Best Plays from American Theatre Festivals 2015, The Best American Short Plays 2018-2019, and Stage It and Stream It: Plays for Virtual Theater all for Applause Theatre and Cinema Books. For his editorial work, he is represented by June Clark of FinePrint Literary Agency. Bray served as a Dramatists Guild Atlanta Region Ambassador in 2019, and he is the co-founder of Athens Playwrights' Workshop. He earned an MFA in Playwriting from The Actors Studio Drama School at The New School and PhD in Theatre from Louisiana State University. He teaches in the Department of Theatre and Film Studies at the University of Georgia where he serves as the Graduate Coordinator, head of the PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies, and head of the dramatic writing sequence.