Baker Artist Portfolios

DR. TYRONE STANLEY (Director) is a playwright and composer whose works have been featured in multiple national and international festivals and concerts. Dr. Stanley is the coordinator and Assistant Professor of Musical Theatre at Morgan State where he made history as the first Creative Dissertation in the English department, earning him the Ph.D in English. He received his M.A. in English/Creative Writing at the University of Central Oklahoma, and B.A. in English from North Carolina A&T State University. An accomplished musician and director, Dr. Stanley is the composer and playwright of Soul On Fire the Musical, which made a Kennedy Center debut in 2014. Soul On Fire the Musical made its Off-Broadway debut in New York's June Havoc Theatre, as a main stage feature for the Midtown International Theatre Festival in 2013. In 2020, he was commissioned by Long Beach Opera Company to write the libretto to two of their new operatic works for the 2020-21 season. In 2022, Dr. Stanley was commissioned to adapt Soul On Fire with an African influence to include the Swahili and Igbo languages. This revision took him to Kenya for research to support the revisions. His work has also been seen in the National Black Theatre Festival, Atlanta Black Theatre Festival, and the Midtown International Theatre Festival and Awards, where it won Best New Musical and Dr. Stanley Best Lead Actor in a Musical. Dr. Stanley is a recipient of the Central Oklahoma Playwriting Award (2009) for his 10-minute play, Distant Cousins, which also earned him the Middle-Atlantic Writers Association Award in Creative Writing. A fluent performer of Italian, French, and German opera, Dr. Stanley made his New York City Opera debut as a featured tenor in Toni Morrison's Margaret Garner, the opera. He has also been seen as Andre the Viper in Fats Waller Musical Ain’t Misbehavin; Sportin’ Life in the Australia/New Zealand tour of George Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess; a feature role in an open run of NJ Performing Arts production of Your Arms Too Short To Box With God, which starred Tony Award winner Melba Moore and Cissy Houston; and the lead role in the regional premiere of Passing Strange (Guthrie, OK). He has appeared on CBS’ As the World Turns; ABC’s All My Children; HBO’s Sex & the City; and Whoopi Goldberg’s Whoopi. Dr. Stanley is currently workshopping a new musical and an original Christmas cantata.