Gregory Jones: Biography

Greg’s latest play, Galileo Was a Leo?, about life direction and life on other planets, was selected for staged readings at Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Octoberfest 2006.

In July of this year, New York’s Penguin Repertory Company produced a reading of Greg’s tragic comedy Red State/Blue State.  It was originally picked by EST, HERE Arts Center, and Bowery Poetry Club for festivals timed to coincide with the 2004 Republican convention and became a finalist for the 2005 Tennessee Williams Literary Prize for Drama and the 2005 StageWorks/Hudson Play-by-Play Festival.  That same year the 2^nd Playwrights Showcase of the Western Region selected Red State/Blue State for workshop.  In 2007, Greg’s play made the finals of the New Jersey Playwrights Contest.  

Men with Clubs, a journey through death and rebirth during a round of golf, won the jury prize at HotCity Theatre’s 2007 GreenHouse New Play Festival in St. Louis and made its world premiere on the HotCity main stage in April 2008.  Men with Clubswas also selected for new play festivals at the Penobscot Theatre Company of Maine (2007) as well as the North American Actors Association in London (2006). 

Rock Out, a musical one-act, was presented at the 2005 New York International Fringe Festival, prompting positive reviews fromThe New York Times and Village Voice critics.  (available upon request)  Rock Out also received honorable mention from Moving Arts’s 2008 One-Act Competition in Los Angeles.

As an actor, Greg most recently appeared with Jane Curtin in the Thalia Follies: At Last – An Election! at Symphony Space in New York City.  (He also wrote many of the show’s songs and sketches.) Other New York credits include Henry Cabot lodge in Year One of the Empire at Metropolitan Playhouse; Galileo Was a Leo? and Red State/Blue State at EST; Tobacco Road and Jonathan Wild at 29^th Street Rep; Caryl’s Churchill’s Cloud Nine at Third Eye Rep; Runner Stumbles at West End Theatre; The American Living Room Series at HERE; Rock Out (wrote and performed) at the New York International Fringe Festival; and Kingdom of the Sun at Manhattan Theatre Source.  He was in Lee Blessing’s Two Rooms at the Vineyard Playhouse, and two seasons ago he played the title role in John Patrick Shanley’s Danny and the Deep Blue Sea at the Vineyard.  Greg does TV commercials, and he has starred in several films, including Max Goodman’s Last Film (New York Film Festival, BBC Film Festival, and Montreal World Film Festival).  His acting teacher is Wynn Handman, artistic director of the American Place Theatre.  

A BFA graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Greg has taken Kristin Linklater’s Shakespeare intensive and studied classical forms with Joanne Camp of Pearl Theatre Company.  In addition, he did a semester abroad studying Shakespeare and Chekhov at Nikitsky Gates Theatre School in Moscow.  He was raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico.