Gordon Greenberg

Education

Greenberg attended Stanford University and NYU Film School Tisch School of the Arts, as well as The Lincoln Center Directors Lab, The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and Stagedoor Manor.

Career

Greenberg directed the Broadway adaptation of Irving Berlin's film Holiday Inn. Greenberg also co-wrote the adaptation (with Chad Hodge). Produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company and Universal Pictures Stage Productions, the show was well received by critics, with Variety noting that "the 1942 film has gotten a complete and first-class stage redo [...] turning this shaky fixer-upper into prime property."

His revival of Guys And Dolls received extensive critical praise and was nominated for six Olivier Awards. It premiered at Chichester Festival Theatre, then ran in London's West End at the Savoy Theatre then at the Phoenix Theatre, where it starred Rebel Wilson. In his review for the New York Times, Ben Brantley called it "Pure, unforced pleasure...a boozy bawdy party."

Greenberg directed and adapted the revised production of Working (adapted and revised with composers Stephen Schwartz and Lin-Manuel Miranda). The revival was presented at Broadway in Chicago's Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place, as well as the 59 E 59 Theatre in New York, the Old Globe in San Diego and Asolo Repertory Theatre. It received a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performances and was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival. It was well-reviewed by critics, with New York One writing that "the revisions, under Gordon Greenberg's imaginatively resourceful direction, hit all the right notes."

Greenberg revised and directed the Drama Desk Award-winning revival of Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris (Drama Desk, Outer Critics, Drama League nominations for Best Revival of a Musical), which garnered positive reviews. Charles Isherwood of the New York Times called it a "powerful revival" and Elysa Gardner of USA Today wrote that Greenberg "captures what made Brel's oeuvre at once distinctly of a certain place and time and enduringly universal."

He recently directed the new stage adaptation of Tangled for Disney.

His other work includes Johnny Baseball at Williamstown Theatre Festival, a workshop of a newly revised Rags for Roundabout Theatre Company, Pirates!, or Gilbert & Sullivan Plunder'd, conceived with Nell Benjamin and John McDaniel; the U.S. national tour of Guys & Dolls, Floyd Collins for Signature Theatre, Stars of David based on Abby Pogrebin's book for producer Daryl Roth, Farewell My Concubine (China) and several television projects, and 1776 for Paper Mill Playhouse. He co-wrote and directed the show Band Geeks [1] [2] for Goodspeed Musicals, supported by grants from the NEA and NAMT. He worked with Kirsten Childs on Disney's Believe, a new musical for Disney Creative Entertainment, the launch show for the Disney Fantasy with Neil Patrick Harris and Jerry Seinfeld, the U.S. National tour of Happy Days (by Garry Marshall); and worked extensively with Stephen Schwartz and Joseph Stein to revise The Baker's Wife in a critically acclaimed production at Paper Mill Playhouse starring Alice Ripley,. Further work includes Half a Sixpence, the South African-inspired production of Jesus Christ Superstar, the U.S. National tour of Peter Pan, We The People: America Rocks at the off-Broadway Lucille Lortel Theater, and contemporary dramas including 33 Variations.

Formerly an actor, Greenberg has appeared in the Broadway productions of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying; Grease; The Little Prince and the Aviator; and Off-Broadway in Peacetime; Names; City Suite; Show Me Where the Good Times Are; and on television in Shaky Ground, Knots Landing, Living Single, Step By Step; and on film in New York City Serenade directed by Frank Whaley.

Greenberg produced and directed commercials for J. Walter Thompson from 1991 to 1993. He served as the Artistic Director of Musical Theatre Works in New York City from 1997 to 2000, and currently serves as Artistic Director of the Broadway Teachers Workshop. and Artistic Associate at The New Group.

Current projects

Greenberg is currently adapting The Secret Of My Success into a stage musical for Universal Pictures, co-writing an original movie musical for Nickelodeon called Emerald City Music Hall and another for The Disney Channel currently titled Scramble Band, with Michael Weiner, writing a new musical updating Jane Austen's Emma to the Helen Gurley Brown 1960s New York, The Single Girls Guide which he developed at Seattle Fifth Avenue Theatre, Dallas Theater Center, Ars Nova, Goodspeed Musicals, ASCAP and a developmental production at Capital Rep and then NAMT. He is co-writing Port-Au-Prince as a NYSCA commission for The New Group with Kirsten Childs.

Quotes

Greenberg has noted that "I’d had a long-standing love for Gilbert and Sullivan. Gilbert and Sullivan, in their day, were the Saturday Night Live or the Jon Stewarts, the social and political satirists that people looked to for a good laugh."

On re-working Working, Greenberg said: "Stephen [Schwartz] gave me free rein to go back to the original book. So I brought him a big stack of index cards and I spread them all out over his living room and I said, 'How about this?' And then he reshuffled them and said, 'How about that.' And I reshuffled them, again and said, 'How about this and that?'"