Telling character-driven stories
from the margins.
Lane Michael Stanley is a director, playwright, filmmaker, and producer, as well as the co-founder of Secretly Famous Productions, along with Lowell Blank. Their award-winning debut feature film ADDICT NAMED HAL was distributed through Freestyle Digital Media after playing festivals including Austin Film Festival, Santa Barbara International Film Festival, and Dances with Films and is now available on all major VOD platforms. They have had pieces produced and read by 19 theaters in 8 states and Australia, including The Barter Theater, Kitchen Dog Theater, and Island City Stage. Their award-winning short films have shown at many festivals, including Outfest, Sidewalk, Reeling, and Seattle Queer Film Festival. They have been a commissioned artist and/or fellow with Art with Impact, Ground Floor Theatre, Lambda Literary, and coLAB Arts. They have been developed at the HBMG Foundation’s National Winter Playwrights Retreat and the Valdez Theater Conference. Lane has won Best Director from Baltimore City Paper's Best of Baltimore, The Bad Oracle, and DC Metro Theatre Arts, and received the Mayor's Individual Artist Award. They were featured in the New York Times and USA Today for their direction of a grunge-era, gender-bending Hamlet. Lane holds an MFA in Directing from the University of Texas at Austin.
Lane is currently the Resident Artist with coLAB Arts and Mission First Housing Group, where they are creating art directly with residents of two permanent supportive housing developments in Edison, NJ as they recover from houselessness. Their residency runs from July 2023-April 2024.
*Please note Lane is transgender and many awards and recognitions can be found under the name Alice Stanley or Alicia Stanley.
Artist Statement
I tell character-driven stories from the margins. My own experience has given me insight into many different worlds: I am a bisexual, non-binary transgender person. In January 2016, my fiancé died suddenly of a heart attack; following this, I went to inpatient rehab for drug and alcohol recovery, and from there lived in a halfway house for six months. My work centers around grief, class, and queerness.
Through my varied experiences, I have met incredible people and heard many stories, some funny, some heartbreaking. My work reflects all the different worlds I see within any given city: from film and theater communities, to 12-step meetings, to prisons and homeless spaces.
My artmaking is an ethical practice, the best way I know to continually open my mind and the minds of others to the varieties and depths of the human experience. I am happiest when I connect with others, and this connection is the heart of my work. I measure the success of my work in how much I connected with others and learned about experiences outside my own. My professional past work and future aspirations are evaluated in relationship to this goal.
Interviews
The Austin Chronicle
”In Production: A Trip To Rehab In Addict Named Hal”
Addict Named Hal is a deeply personal project for Stanley, drawing from their own experiences with addiction after the death of their fiancé in 2016… Yet just because film production allows for much more creative engagement, Stanley was determined not to be possessive and self-indulgent. "I'm a big believer that just because something is true doesn't mean it's interesting." When telling a narrative story, "nobody really cares which sections are coming from your life and which aren't. They care about what's an interesting story and a compelling character."
The New York Times
"Dead 400 Years, But Still Very Much Alive"
Baltimore’s Cohesion Theater is focusing part of its season on works by and starring transgender theater makers. For its “Hamlet,” the director [Lane] Stanley, who doesn’t identify with any gender, cast a female actress to play a female Hamlet and a female actress to play a male Laertes. There’s nothing new about gender shake-ups in Shakespeare, but for this show the gender-fluid roles were hashed out in collaborative decisions over whether the characters would be male, female or “fall somewhere on the transgender spectrum,” said Brad Norris, a company co-founder.
USA Today
400 Years After Shakespeare's Death, A Diverse World Is His Stage
Cohesion Theatre artistic producer [Lane] Stanley, who directed the recent Hamlet with a lesbian protagonist, is in [their] 20s, and has re-interpreted other Shakespeare plays to incorporate transgender characters. "People use Shakespeare's work to touch on political issues all the time," Stanley says. "Gender diversity is at the forefront right now, and there's a lot that can be played with and reimagined."
Awards
2023
Pitch Competition Winner
The Film Fund
for quentin blue
Best LGBTQ Short
Poppy Jasper International Film Festival
San Francisco Frozen Film Festival
for boifriend
Grant Award Winner
Maryland State Arts Council
Queen Anne’s County Arts Council
for ink or dye
Finalist
Humanitas New Voices Fellowship
for hopeless dope fiend
Finalist
Seven Devils Playwrights Conference
for jack & aiden
2022
Best Narrative Feature
Poppy Jasper International Film Festival
for addict named hal
Audience Award
OUT at the Movies Film Festival
for boifriend
Competition Winner
The Film Fund
for quentin blue
2021
Best U.S. Narrative Feature
Big Bear Film Summit
for addict named hal
2018-2020
2017
Semi-Finalist
Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference
for Lipstick, rain falls special on me, & who’s gonna love you!
Audience Favorite
Fells Point Corner Theatre’s 10x10x10
for “addict Named Hal”
Top 10 Plays of 2017
Baltimore Beat
#3: Sally McCoy
2016
Best Director
Baltimore City Paper's Best of Baltimore 2016
Best Stage Series
Baltimore City Paper's Best of Baltimore 2016
For The Trans Voices Workshop Series at Cohesion Theatre Company
Best Direction of Plays in Professional Theatre
DC Metro Theatre Arts
For Hamlet at Cohesion Theatre Company
Best Design in Professional and Community Theatres
DC Metro Theatre Arts
sound design, hamlet at cohesion theatre company
2015
Mayor's Individual Artist Award
Creative Baltimore Fund
A monetary prize to fund The Trans Voices Workshop Series
Best New Theatre
Baltimore City Paper's Best of Baltimore 2015
For Cohesion Theatre Company
2014
Best Direction
Baltimore United Local Stage & Hidden Independent Theatre Awards
For Edward II