Today we’d like to introduce you to John Patrick Bray.
Hi John, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I was born in Northern Jersey and lived there until I was eight years old. We all moved to the Hudson Valley and that’s where I grew up, leaving when I was twenty-nine. My twin brother (Gregg Bray) and I started writing poetry in elementary school and distributing the poems to classmates. So, I had the writing bug early. When we played with our action figures, we’d give them our own names and create our own stories.
In sixth grade, Gregg and I wrote short stories starring Zorro, and later, I wrote a series of short pieces about a detective and his reluctant sidekick hanging out in Istanbul (a sort of hybrid between The Maltese Falcon and Sherlock Holmes). So, the desire to create stories that served as an homage to favorite genres was always there.
Gregg and I wrote our first play in 1994, FOUL FEAST, which was produced by the Dutchess Community College Programming Board in 1996, with massive help from the community theatre group CAST of Hyde Park. We both attended DCC and finished our AS degrees in Communication and Media Arts. I stuck with theatre, transferring to SUNY New Paltz, where I had the opportunities to perform and direct, and I continued writing plays. I then attended The Actors Studio Drama School at The New School and received an MFA in Playwriting. I grew a deep love and appreciation for the academy and continued my journey with a PhD in Theatre Studies from Louisiana State University. I’ve been teaching at UGA for the last thirteen years, and I still write plays, screenplays, and I have served as a freelance anthology editor for Applause Theatre and Cinema Books.
This is a bird’s-eye-view.
The entire story includes all the teachers that encouraged me along the way: from Sylvan School in Rutherford, through the Highland Central School District; from Dutchess Community College, through SUNY New Paltz, The Actors Studio Drama School, The New School, and Louisiana State University. I had great mentors and friends along the way who were excellent guides, supporters, cheerleaders, and collaborators. I’ve also had excellent students along the way who teach me so much about theatre, film, and life.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The thing about having a career in the arts is you’re forging your own path. While you’re in the thick of it, it can feel endless, like you’re not getting anywhere, just constantly pushing forward. But if you look behind you, you’ll see the path you’ve created, and it looks as if it was planned all along. You make one project, then the next, then the next. You keep that up, and it begins to look like a career. And I think that’s what a career is: completing one project at a time.
Every production is a miracle. Each one brings its own challenges and struggles. For me, the struggles were largely financial. When I was younger, I knew some folks who had been involved in theatre but had been financially solvent enough to pursue the dream while maintaining a safety net. My safety net was I could live at home with my parents (my dad is a car salesman and my mom worked in retail stores), but I knew that wouldn’t and shouldn’t last forever. So, while creating my path, I worked full-time hours, all kinds of weird, wild, and fun jobs. I was a bagel baker at New Paltz Bagel Cafe, owned and operated by the wonderful Paul Kellerman. I was a car swap driver for a handful of dealerships. I was a mascot for WCZX FM. I gutted fish at a Korean supermarket. I was a bank courier (mail delivery). I worked at the World of Science in the Poughkeepsie Galleria. Basically, I worked. And while it was hard, I ended up with a very strong work ethic (my wife calls me a workaholic) and had a bunch of new experiences and stories to tell.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’m primarily a playwright and have been for nearly thirty years. As I said before, every project is a miracle. I think the work I am still most proud of is a full-length play called Friendly’s Fire. I developed it with the Athens Playwrights Workshop between 2011 and 2013. It had a reading with the Appalachian Festival of Plays and Playwrights (AFPP) at Barter Theatre in 2015 and would later be produced there in 2017, directed by then-producing Artistic Director Rick Rose, starring Nicholas Piper, who selected the piece for the AFPP. It was my first LORT production. After a revision, the play had a subsequent production at the Theater at the 14th. St. Y in NYC, produced by Rising Sun Performance Co. as part of LABA’s Season of War and Peace. It was directed by Anna Hogan.
What makes me particularly proud of this play is that it is wildly theatrical: there’s a shootout with carpenter bees, a visit with Santa Claus, a polar bear dancing the Macarena. I wrote this at a time when the advice to playwrights was to write small: 2-3 characters, no set. While there are some strong plays that can be produced on a budget, I’ve always dreamed big. So, the fact that this one landed meant the world to me.
Furthermore, the play tells the story of a soldier who might have PTSD (I never use the term, but it’s implied). Rick Rose at The Barter decided to use the play for community engagement and invited veterans and members of Veterans and Warriors to Agriculture to have a conversation following the performances. These conversations, even more so than the play, had a major impact on the community. The production allowed for those talk-back sessions. I am grateful to Rick, Nick, and to everyone involved with Barter Theatre for creating a space for those who serve our country to talk to each other, to talk with us. It was a truly rewarding experience.
Subsequent plays have also been very theatrical. I am about to self-produce my play Tracks based on folks my wife and I knew in the Hudson Valley during the 1990s, when we were faced with economic devastation which was more or less the start of the opioid epidemic in our area. The Headless Horseman is in that play. He has a computer monitor for his head.
What are your plans for the future?
Having had an amazing development opportunity with The Skeleton Rep., my play St. John of Suburbia will premiere in NYC this fall with Kingdom Theatre Company. More on this soon!
I have my full-length play Tracks (which was developed with The Skeleton Rep and also with The Wallace Theater – massive thanks to all involved!), which I’m producing in Georgia next year. That’s scary and exciting: it’s been a while since I’ve self-produced. We have a great space and some great folks who are talking about being involved. Keep an eye out for Tracks in April 2025.
My brother and I also made a short film, Escapism (2023), which won a Broadcast Education Association (BEA) Award and has been in a number of online and onsite national, international, online, and onsite festivals, including The Lift-Off Series and the Milan Shorts Festival in Italy. I love this crazy film. Our friend Joshua Kreitzman served as Executive Producer, and it starred SAG/AFTRA members (and friends) Joseph Davis and Willis Williams. We are sending it out to more festivals, so keep an eye out!
Joshua also executive produced the short film “Barflies” (2021), which I wrote and directed by John Neiderer. That film was created for the 2021 Horror Realm Con in Pittsburgh. You can find “Barflies” on YouTube.
My brother and I are currently working on a film adaptation of my short play “Fix.” We hope to shoot this autumn and go into post-production this spring. Gregg is a wizard of a filmmaker and has won a number of awards over the years. He’s also an amazing teacher. He works at our alma mater, SUNY New Paltz, where he serves as Department Chair of Digital Media and Journalism.
Over the last few years, I’ve also been writing audio dramas, which has been a delight! Gather by the Ghost Light, led by Jonathan Cook, produced my short “The Demon Lady;” Ensemble Theatre of Chattanooga, under the direction of the great Garry Lee Posey, produced my shorts “Seal Island,” “Green Sound,” and my monologue “Beacon” all for the LIGHTS UP podcast; Shouting in the Evening produced my short “Buckle;” and Theatrical Shenanigans – created and hosted by Rachel Feeny-Williams – commissioned my five-minute play “Auld Lang Syne” for the anniversary episode. Like playwriting and screenwriting, writing audio dramas is still writing for performance, but the dialogue has to perform much more work. The characters need to tell us what they see and what they’re doing without it sounding forced. I am so glad I’ve been able to develop this skill and am grateful to all the artists involved in these productions. I hope to continue writing for this format.
I also have a monograph under contract (more on this after the book is delivered September 1st); this has been a two-year adventure. And last year, Applause published Stage It and Stream It: Plays for Virtual Theater, which I edited. All of the plays in that anthology were written specifically for online platforms, and the book features some of the most exciting writers and theatre artists working today. I hope you’ll seek it out!
So, lots of irons in lots of fires. The work continues!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://newplayexchange.org/users/4173/john-patrick-bray
- Instagram: https://www.nextstagepress.com/?s=john+patrick+bray
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jpbplaywright
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-patrick-bray-4511741a6/
- Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6672570/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
