Greg Jones Ellis has more than fifty theatre roles to his credit in off-off Broadway, stock, and workshop productions from Missouri to Manhattan, Wisconsin to Washington, DC. Recent onstage credits include musical portrayals of Arvide Abernathy in Guys and Dolls (LiveArts), Judge Turpin in Sweeney Todd (Opera AACC), Mr. Bumble in Oliver! (Classic Theatre of Maryland), Mr. Lundie in Brigadoon (Compass Rose Theater), Thomas Andrews in Titanic (guest artist, Theatre Lab), and the snobbish butler Horace Lane in the musical adaptation of The Importance of Being Earnest, entitled Ernest in Love (Colonial Players).

When not singing, he could be seen as the doomed nuclear scientist in The Children and as Beethoven in 33 Variations(both at Colonial Players) and buried up to his neck in Samuel Beckett’s Play (Arcturus Theatre Company).

On the concert stage, Greg’s credits include an international tour with legendary jazz musician Max Roach as part of his vocal ensemble (and on the recording To the Max!). His own jazz and American songbook compositions and arrangements have been heard by New York performance groups Vocal Ease and The Uptown Connection as well as in his own New York cabaret performances, most recently in a retrospective entitled “I Opened for Barry Manilow’s Mother and Other Tales from the Fringes of Show Business.” Greg has performed at Carnegie Hall, the 2,000-year-old Arena di Verona in Italy, and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

His teachers have included Broadway veterans Shawn Elliot (Jacques Brel is Alive and Well…), Arabella Hong (Flower Drum Song) and theatre legend Austin Pendleton (Fiddler on the Roof). Greg earned his B.A. (magna cum laude) in Drama at Catholic University and an M.A. (with high honors) in English Literature from Salisbury University.

Greg is also an award-winning playwright. He received a 2017 Julie Harris Playwriting Award for his comedy-dramaAll Save One. All Save One received its world premiere at the Washington Stage Guild. His first produced play wasDivinity Place, which received its world premiere at the North Street Playhouse in Virginia. Other works include a double bill of one-act plays: the first act is an adaptation of Edith Wharton’s short story Roman Fever followed by an original comedy entitled Culver City Fever. His contemporary drama about the tragic consequences of a daytime talk show, Dead Air, was awarded the Dominion Stage Playwriting Award, the Todd McEnerney Award, and was a Finalist in the Baltimore Playwrights Festival. His most recent full-length play, Of All the Trees, was performed at the West Hollywood Pride Festival after winning best new script by the Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights (ALAP) and was a finalist at the Morgan-Wixson New Play Festival in Southern California. ALAP also chose Greg’s short comedy “The Calling” for its New Play Festival. He has studied playwriting with Lucas Hnath (A Doll’s House Part 2, Dana H).

Greg created and curates the New Play Reading Series for the Classic Theatre of Maryland and has also published theatre-related articles, including a peer-reviewed analysis of Langston Hughes’s monologue poems entitled “The Lifelong Dinner Guest of the Negro Vogue” and profiles of playwrights Marsha Norman and Paul Zindel for Biographymagazine. He created a 10-week course, “10 Plays Everyone Should Know,” for the Osher Institute for Lifelong Learning that proved so popular that eight “sequel” courses have followed. He is a one-day Jeopardy! Champion, thanks to the Final Jeopardy category: “Characters in Plays!”