Christopher J. Staley (he/him) is a teaching artist and scholar. His research interests center around actor training pedagogy, cognitive theatre studies, and existential psychology.

Dr. Staley has performed with the American Repertory Theatre, OBERON, Moscow Art Theatre Studio, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Opera Carolina, Blue Flamingo Theatre, Empirical Rogue Theatre, Pittsburgh Public Theatre, the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival, and at other venues. His video collaborations with visual artists have been installed at Locust Projects in Miami, Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, the Hong Gah museum in Taipei, and others. His co-produced works have appeared in NYC, Dublin, Costa Mesa, Vancouver, and Nuevo Vallarta.

At Texas Tech, Dr. Staley directed A Better Place in the DSA for the 2024 Frontier Fest. His most recent mainstage play, The Ghost Project, was devised originally in The Marfa Intensive, an immersive “signature program” of which Dr. Staley is the Co-Artistic Director along with Professor Katherine Wilkinson of Columbia University. Under this new direction, the Intensive marks a significant shift in Texas Tech’s season-planning profile, in which mainstage material is now developed in Marfa over the summer before returning to Lubbock the following year. The Marfa Intensive in 2025 will focus on Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, after which Dr. Staley will be Co-Artistic Director of the 2026 DanceTech: Rites of Spring, alongside Dance Professor Tony “YNOT” Denaro and Design Professor, Mallory Prucha.

Dr. Staley is a specialist in actor training pedagogy with a focus on the Suzuki Method of Actor Training, Viewpoints, Yoga for Performers, and Stanislavskian Active Analysis. He has trained or studied multiple times each with Tadashi Suzuki and the Suzuki Company of Toga, Anne Bogart and the SITI Company, Pacific Performance Project, Theatre Nohgaku, with Robert Wilson as a performer at the Watermill Center event Paradiso and as a production assistant on Wilson’s Lecture on Nothing at the Ninth International Theatre Olympics, and at the Moscow Art Theatre. He has also trained with the Judson Dance Theater choreographer, Deborah Hay, and performed for directors such as John Tiffany and Janos Szasz.

Invited guest lectures or workshops have included theatre and performance studies departments at UT Austin, Muhlenberg College, Weber State University, Endicott College, Carnegie Mellon University, Juniata College, DePaul University, Middle Tennessee State University, Lincoln Center, and University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Staley was a visiting Assistant Professor at Point Park University Conservatory of Performing Arts. He has presented at conferences such as American Society for Theatre Research, Association for Theatre in Higher Education, Mid-America Theatre Conference, European Shakespeare Research Association, American Association of Teachers of Japanese Conference, Performance Studies International, and others. Published works include articles in The Drama Review and Theatre, Dance, and Performance Training and other pieces in Asian Theatre Journal and Theatre Annual. Chapter contributions have been published in Teaching Performance Practices in Remote and Hybrid Spaces, Theatre and the Macabre, Re-mapping Shakespeare: Hybridity, Diversity, and Adaptation, and Empathy: Emotional, Ethical, and Epistemological Narratives.