Set in and around the breezy elegance of Baldwin Hills, a hilltop black upper middle class Southern California community, it is the tale of Dorian Moore, a handsome and mysterious young man of easy and flexable charm, a pretty young black man who comes to provide much needed comfort to the monied lonely and the looking. And where, ultimately, those that get to know him, that once knew him, those that share him, come to feel a bittersweet sense of new self, borne from the gift of his fleeting presence.
Stanley Bennett Clay received 3 NAACP Theatre Awards and 3 Drama-logue Awards for writing, producing and directing the stage play "Ritual." The film version, starring Clarence Williams III and Denise Nicholas, marks Clay's film writing/directorial debut and was voted The Jury Award at the 2000 Pan African Film Festival.
Clay produced on stage the GLAAD, L.A. Weekly, L.A. Times and NAACP Award-winning musical "Children of the Night" and the world premiere of James Graham Bronson's "Willie & Esther." That production received 2 L.A. Weekly Awards as Best Play and Best Ensemble Performance.
Clay wrote, directed, and composed "Street Nativity" (commissioned by the National Council of Negro Women for the Black Family Reunion Festival), wrote/directed the play "Lovers," (Theatre of Arts) directed west coast premieres of "Jonin'" at The Harmon Theatre (Drama-logue Award/Direction) and "The First Breeze of Summer" (Theatre of Arts).
He is the author of three novels, "Diva" (Holloway House), "In Search Of Pretty Young Men" and "Looker," (Simon & Schuster/Atria Books). "Search" won the 2004 N.Y. Hotep Society Book Award for Best Gay Novel. His fourth book "Visible Lives: A Tribute to E. Lynn Harris" co-written with James Earl Hardy and Terrance Dean was released by Kensington Books in 2010.
Former Editor-In-Chief of Black Beat magazine and American Correspondent for London's Blues and Soul magazine, Clay published and edited SBC magazine for 10 years (1991-2001), at the time the most widely distributed periodical for the black LGBT community.
A Los Angeles-based actor, he starred, guest-starred, and/or has been featured in over 200 TV episodes, films and commercials, including "Good Times," "Cannonball," "Minstrel Man," "Man Friday" and "Cheers."
He received the NAACP Best Actor Image Award for his stage performance in the Inner City Cultural Center's production of "Anna Lucasta" and was nominated for the same award (and won another Drama-logue Award) for his performance in the Lafayette Players West's production of "Zooman and the Sign." Other stage performances include "Or" by Felton Perry (One Flight Up), "Sonata" by Bill Duke (Theatre of Arts), Albert Camus' "Caligula" (Zodiac Theatre) and "Six Pieces of Musical Broadway" (Dorothy Chandler Pavilion).
He most recently starred in his new play "Armstrong's Kid" as a gay schoolteacher falsely accused of child molestation by his best friend's 14-year-old son. "Armstrong's Kid" ran nearly 9 months at Theatre Unlimited in North Hollywood and the Lucy Florence Village Theatre in South Los Angeles.
Clay is the first recipient of the African American Gay and Lesbian Cultural Alliance Outstanding Achievement Award (1990) and received Genre magazine's 1993 Role Model to the Gay Community's Lifeguard Award. He is the recipient of the International Black Writers of America's highest honor, The Edna Crutchfield Founder's Literary Achievement Award "In recognition of outstanding work as writer, publisher, producer and director of the written word." On August 18, 2007, he was awarded The Lifetime Achievement Award at the 5th Annual Black Lesbian and Gay International Film Festival in Oakland CA.
Born in Chicago, IL the second oldest of eight children has lived in Los Angeles since 1963. He has been in a committed relationship with his partner Reny for 7 years.
