Who

One of contemporary theater's most prolific scribes, Greenberg has written more than two dozen plays, including Three Days of Rain, The Violet Hour, and gay baseball epic Take Me Out.

Backstory

Long Island native Greenberg graduated magna cum laude from Princeton, earning an "A" on his 430-page thesis novel from his advisor, Joyce Carol Oates. He embarked upon a graduate degree in English literature at Harvard, but got bored and dropped out, instead enrolling at Yale Drama School with dreams of being an actor. After dabbling in playwriting, Greenberg decided to quit acting and devote himself to writing full-time, and had his first play hit Broadway, Eastern, Standard, in 1989. Since then, he's penned such major shows A Naked Girl on the Appian Way, The Violet Hour and Dance of Death.

Of note

Greenberg's most famous play, 2002's Take Me Out, centered around a gay pro baseball player's decision to come out of the closet. The piece (which was directed by Joe Mantello) won a Tony, Pulitzer and a Drama Desk Award. More recently, in 2006, a Joe Mantello-directed production of Three Days of Rain—a play Greenberg had written in 1997—starring Julia Roberts, Paul Rudd, and Bradley Cooper had a limited-run engagement at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater. But while audiences flocked to see Julia's Broadway debut, the critical reception was decidedly unkind—the Times' Ben Brantley, for one, called it "wooden and splintered."

Medical file

In 1992, around the time of his first Broadway success, Greenberg was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma; he was later cured of the disease. But he still has a raft of psychological ailments to keep him busy, including his intense anxiety (Greenberg is never far from his supply of Xanax) and his phone phobia—he rarely picks up a phone unless he absolutely has to. Not all of these psychological quirks have hurt his career. Greenberg's anxiety was at such a fever pitch during the Republican National Convention/monster heat wave in 2004, he barricaded himself in his air-conditioned apartment and turned out three plays in a month.

Personal

Greenberg lives alone in a West 22nd Street duplex apartment packed with books. He's been known to hang out at Chelsea's Moonstruck Diner, which has been referred to by friends and colleagues his "office."