Stan Lai is considered "the best Chinese language playwright and director in the world" (BBC), "Asia's top theatre director" (Asiaweek), and "Asia's flagship playwright" (China Daily). Since 1984, Lai's plays have greatly influenced theatre in the Chinese-language world, including those regarded as masterpieces of the modern Chinese-language theatre such as Secret Love in Peach Blossom Land, The Village and his epic 8-hour A Dream Like a Dream, called by China Daily "possibly the greatest Chinese-language play since time immemorial," and his latest 6-hour epic AGO, which Critical Stages says exceeds Dream "in terms of scope and magnitude."
 
Lai's publications include his influential Stan Lai on Creativity, 28 plays (in Chinese), and a 3-volume, 12-play collection Selected Plays of Stan Lai which will be published in his own English translations this year by the University of Michigan Press. Among other awards, Lai received a star on the Walk of Fame at the Sibiu International Theatre Festival. Lai is also an award-winning feature filmmaker and acclaimed opera and events director, as well as a noted theatre educator, having taught over two decades at Taipei National University of the Arts, as well as at Stanford, Berkeley, CalArts and the Shanghai Theatre Academy. Lai is currently Artistic Director of Performance Workshop, Taiwan; and Theatre Above, Shanghai, a venue dedicated to the performance of his works, and where he is also co-founder of Theatre Training Above. He is Co-founder, Festival Director and Jury Head of the Wuzhen Theatre Festival.