Stan Lai or Lai Sheng-chuan is a highly influential award-winning US born Taiwan based playwright and theater director—according to the BBC, Lai is “the best Chinese language playwright and director in the world.” The Beijing News calls his 2008 play, The Village, "the pinnacle of our era of theatre." After earning his Ph.D. in Dramatic Arts at UC Berkeley in 1983 Lai has gone on to author thirty plays and a best-selling book on creativity. He has received Taiwan’s National Arts Award twice and has been inducted into the Chinese Theater Hall of Fame. "