Jeff Key brings his one man show The Eyes of Babylon to Theatre Group as a writer, actor, activist and philanthropist based in Hollywood, California. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Theatre from the University of Alabama.
Jeff was born in Walker County, Alabama in 1965 and attended public school in the first decade of desegregated classes there. Jeff was profoundly affected by the racism still apparent in everyday life and, from a young age made efforts to do his part to eradicate it. He was raised by deeply religious parents and his mother, a social science teacher, made great efforts to make him aware of the negative effects racism has and also to help him to understand the conflict in our country at that time over the Vietnam War. In 2000, at the age of 34, he went to Marine Corps boot camp and became a reserve marine. After the terror attacks of 2001, his unit made preparations for activation and in March, 2003, deployed to Eastern Iraq. Two months later, Jeff was flown back to the United States for surgery and because of his concerns about the things he had observed and because of his growing convictions that the coalition’s tactics were ineffective in thwarting terrorism; he decided to leave the military.
On March 31, 2004, he went on CNN as Paula Zahn’s guest and used the ban on gays in the military to be discharged and to speak out in opposition to the war. His straight buddies in the Marines had always known that he was gay but played along with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” because his commitment to them and to the country was never in question. Jeff kept a journal while in Iraq which he developed into the award winning and critically acclaimed one man performance piece, The Eyes of Babylon. The play was his way of speaking out about a war that he had come to believe was immoral and illegal. Determined to keep true to the reasons he joined the Marines, he established The Mehadi Foundation, a non-profit organization designed to help the veterans of this war, specifically those who attempt to self-medicate PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) with drugs and alcohol. Jeff is nine years clean and sober and has worked with hundreds of other alcoholics helping them (and him) stay sober.
The Mehadi Foundation (named for a young Iraqi boy Jeff met while there) also supports philanthropic efforts in Iraq to help rebuild homes and schools and provide clean water and healthy food to the Iraqi civilians. Although his ideas about violence (even state sponsored violence) as an effective tool for conflict resolution have changed, he is still deeply committed to defending defenseless people and supporting his fellow troops. Jeff is slated to direct his next play, Let Us Sing, at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, a magnet school for artistically gifted high school students in Birmingham, Alabama. Let Us Sing, set in the conservative Eighties and loosely based on Jeff’s own teenage years, is the story of a group of Alabama teenagers, gay and straight, black and white who gather often to drink large quantities of alcohol, sing religious songs and talk about issues of spirituality, racism and homophobia.
Jeff now travels often speaking to high schools, businesses, colleges and universities, peace groups and churches on effective non-violent conflict resolution and continues to perform The Eyes of Babylon nationally and, since theatres in London and Jerusalem now want to bring the play…soon internationally as well. Jeff Key is the subject of a Showtime documentary entitled Semper Fi: One Marine's Journey that began to air on that network in June 2007.