- Is a highly respected Teacher of Theatre in the New York tri-state area, and co-founder of Harlem's Real Life Theater Ministries.
- Greg and Margaret (an aspiring actress) met a few weeks later when they were both cast in the play "Whatever Happened to Amos and Andy". Greg was Lightin'. Margaret was Sapphire. "We started making "goo-goo eyes" backstage; seven months later Margaret and Greg got married. They had a whirlwind relationship: Met April 12, 1982. Got married December 31, 1982. Their first child was born March 16, 1983.
- Greg was in the delivery room each time to see all four of his children being born.
- In 2011, Greg produced "A Christ Mass Story" with packed performances and overwhelming success. It was a Black musical that Greg himself wrote.
- In the early days of his acting career, Greg used to perform at children's birthday parties as Jocko the Clown. Jocko didn't talk. He communicated via pantomime and a homemade trumpet. He used to travel to his gigs in full costume on the New York subways. The first time his wife Margaret ever saw Greg was at a play reading at Frank Silvera's Writers Workshop in Harlem and because Greg had a gig right afterwards, he was in his full-clown makeup.
- He has had sit-down meetings with folks like producer/director Greg Mosher and dramaturg Anne Cattaneo, from Lincoln Center.
- South African writer, director, producer Duma Ndlovu saw the writer in Greg early on and helped to encourage and nurture it. He was behind the scenes in August 2008, when Greg was sent by the United States Department of State as a Cultural Envoy to teach playwriting. An extraordinary accomplishment, especially given that the kid who failed Freshmen English was being sent to South Africa to teach playwriting!.
- Once, during his junior year at Howard, Greg "improv'ed " his way to a B on a Theater History final. He did a performance piece on Native Americans. He made a bison mask, wore a dance belt with some of his roommates' animal skins tucked hanging from it. He had no idea what he was going to say. Creativity just took over. The fact that he pulled that off blew him away.
- A graduate of Howard University's Department of Drama, an HBCU located in Washington, D.C.
- Along with Sam David, he is a co-founder, partner, and producer (executive) in Black World Studios.
- Malcolm Shabazz, Malcolm X's grandson, was a student of Greg's at Benjamin Banneker Academy for the two weeks leading up to his setting the fire at the home of his grandmother Betty Shabazz.
- He headed off to the prestigious Howard University in the fall of 1973 looking for the "Revolution". He was ready for it. He had packed seven dashikis -- one for each day. He finally realized after about a week, that he had missed the revolution by a semester. Brothers were wearing bowties and dressing like "The Great Gatsby".".
- All through college and for years afterward, he had about four writer buddies, classmates of his from Howard, who would always encourage him to write by saying... 'Greg did you write that down?' 'You should write that down.' One of those buddies took Greg computer shopping back in 1989, and Greg bought his first computer, a Leading Edge Model D, with three gigs.
- During his 2008 South Africa residency, Greg conducted workshops at The Market Theater in Johannesburg. He was developing a play for four South African actresses. That play became "South Africans-Americans". The love and honor that he received as an artist from his students in South Africa, many of them professionals themselves, was a humbling experience.
- Is an African American actor, director, playwright, and educator, with over 40 years of experience -- from stage and screen and behind the scenes.
- Actor Michael B. Jordan was a playwriting student of Greg's for two years in a Teaching Artist Residency Greg did at Newark, New Jersey's Arts High.
- Alisha Keys used to babysit for Greg's children, when Greg and his wife lived in the performing artist complex, Manhattan Plaza, in New York City.
- Actor Donald Faison was on the softball team that Greg coached at Manhattan Plaza. ("Those boys were so good that I had to convince them to make three outs so the Mercy Rule wouldn't be enforced in the first inning.").
- Tony Award-winning Playwright Joseph Walker (The River Niger), was Greg's senior year Acting Professor at Howard University. It was Walker who unlocked the words of William Shakespeare for Gregory Holtz as an actor.
- Greg has never formally taken a class in playwriting. (Most playwrights have not.) He learned his craft from reading and performing so many well-written plays and working with outstanding directors who in the rehearsal process, could deconstruct a play and put it back together.
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content