Steven Boone: (theater critic for Show Business Weekly) Excerpts from his review: Credit director Gregory Fletcher for finding the right pitch between shrill and hilarious in each actor’s interpretation. He dazzlingly works Ted LoRusso’s [Hallelujah Breakdown] script in a scene set backstage at the drama class production of West Side Story (with a violent twist that Rushmore’s Max Fischer would envy), and a ballet duet between Rex and Jesus himself. With a little more raunchiness, the show could make a vintage underground comic.
Charles Busch: (actor, playwright) Fletcher’s Shorts [within his book Shorts and Briefs] are filled with nice surprises and stamina. His Briefs are filled with insight and clarity. The bar is raised high in this enviable package.”
Marsue Cumming-MacNicol: (dramaturg, former administrator of the National Playwrights Conference, former executive director of the 52nd Street Project) I was completely taken with Gregory Fletcher’s inventive and fluid direction of Summer and Smoke. He illuminated the script and provided the actors with a context within which to do their best work. I had a thoroughly good time.
Martin Denton: (theater critic, nytheatre.com) Excerpts from his review: “Edenville, a new romantic comedy by Gregory Fletcher is a charmer. The play delivers delightful surprise after delightful surprise in the context of a very familiar tale. All is couched in enough wit and irreverence that it not only feels engagingly welcome and fun, but even original. Edenville is a sweet, warm, and funny comedy.”
Christopher Durang: (playwright) Greg and I shared a wonderful teacher, the late Howard Stein, though we knew him in different decades. Greg’s book, Shorts and Briefs, makes an interesting case about how the short play can be a valuable tool to learn how to write plays in general—10 minute plays, 90 minute plays, plays that last for days. And he includes several effective short plays of his own, which certainly enhance his premise.”
Mary Jane Evans: (former theater Chair at California State University at Northridge) Greg’s production of Runaways was an outstanding success. He is sensitive to script, to actors, and to audience. His approach is highly creative, yet always respectful of the text. Enthusiastic and dedicated, Greg has an open, ingenuous quality, which is refreshingly appealing in contrast to so many who pretend to jaded sophistication. He is open, forthright and honest in his dealings with others.
Adele L. Franz: (former associate literary agent to Audrey Wood) Greg’s production of Runaways is one of the most exciting and inventive theatrical experiences in my decades of covering New York and the regional theatre scene. It involved a solid grasp of combining music and drama and a firm directorial hand. He has an important future in the theatre.
June Gable: (actress) When I was cast in the role of Molly Picon in the Off-Broadway production of Picon Pie, (as a replacement with only two weeks to prepare), it was because of Gregory Fletcher’s expertise as a Stage Manager that enabled me to perform the role at all. Fortunately, at a later date, he became the Director of said play, (for the national tour), and it was then that I could finally be free to truly enjoy playing the part. He showed wisdom, humor, and great clarity in the way he held rehearsals, and my co-star greatly improved. He is a most inspired and diligent worker; quite willing to share artistic ideas with very little ego, so collaboration is also a joy with him. I have been an actress for many years, and he will remain a favorite of mine.
Roger Gindi: (producer, general manager) Having been the company manager of the Broadway production of Runaways, I was very impressed with Gregory Fletcher’s production at Cal. State Northridge. Parts of the Broadway production were too presentational for my taste and often moments were not fully realized. But with Greg’s production, he really captured the darker moments, the youthful angst, and his fluid staging and one-on-one work with his actors seemed to serve the text in a way that made good sense to me, while maintaining the entertainment value of the musical.
Kate Grant: (playwright) Gregory directs with a sure hand and a cool head. He served my play [The Wound of Love at Provincetown Repertory Theatre] beautifully, balancing a pragmatic approach to the resources at hand with a high level of artistic integrity. He provides empathic leadership and a fine interpretive skill.
Larry Harris: (playwright) Working with Greg on my one-act Answering the Echo [at Off-Off Broadway’s Intar 53] was a joyful collaboration that produced powerful results. Greg’s directorial concept brought the play into a sharp focus that liberated the text, giving a fresh life to the farcical elements. He is also an actor’s director. Whether it’s clarifying the motivations of a character or giving his cast brilliant and poignant bits of stage business, he makes sure they shine.
Byrne Harrison: (theater critic, oobr.com) [Off-Off Broadway] Excerpts from his review: “Edenville by Gregory Fletcher…fresh, moving, interesting, a high-energy play. Edenville was a delight.” Excerpts from his review: “My Sister the Cow by Gregory Fletcher is a cute comedy [which] reveals a dirty and wonderfully absurd family secret…amusing, clever, this play started the EATfest on a fun note.”
Tina Howe: (playwright) [Regarding Shorts and Briefs] “A frisky show and tell about designing shorts and briefs. How to put them on, as well as take them off.”
Sue Jarrison: (theater critic, Provincetown Banner) Excerpts from her review: “The Provincetown Repertory Theatre’s production of The Wound Of Love overcomes a difficult performance space to deliver two hours of solid theater. Director Gregory Fletcher gets his actors to strike a nice balance between the portrayal of everyday life and those larger-than-life moments that pop up like infrequent icebergs threatening to sink everyone’s boat. The pace, thanks to the playwright’s sharp dialogue and the staging, keeps the audience engaged through the two acts. It’s a painful story well told and well acted.”
Mark Lambeck: (playwright) I’ve been lucky enough to have my one-act play Tuna & Jack produced several times and thought I’d seen every nuance already explored. But Gregory Fletcher’s extraordinary staging [at Off-Off Broadway’s Intar 53] brought the play out of its one-dimensional reality and introduced a mystical element that hadn’t been tapped into before. It was a truly unique, visionary approach that gave me a whole new perspective on the piece.
Bruce Levitt: (director, theater faculty at Cornell and former chair of School of Arts) Greg’s love for the theatre in all its forms is boundless. Greg is also undaunted by any challenge and, in his gentle and intelligent way, is capable of a multitude of tasks. Greg’s greatest gift, however, is his ability to communicate both his knowledge and his enthusiasm to colleagues and students. Because Greg is so warm in interpersonal relationships, he tends to draw out the best from whomever he is in contact. Greg’s generosity of spirit and his totally unassuming personality enable him to succeed at everything and anything he tries.
Norman Mailer: (writer) This letter is in praise of Gregory Fletcher’s skills as a director. I saw him put on an intimate, intelligent and difficult play [The Wound of Love] in the cramped and unwelcoming confines of the Leo Manso Theatre in Provincetown, and he set out manfully to solve its problems by doing it as theater in the round since the room was too small and too un-raked to admit the eight rows or so he might otherwise have had. Theater in the round, I have always thought, is the most difficult obstacle course a director can set himself, but I felt Greg solved the greater part of those problems with skill and wit and a fine sense of placement, and I write this letter to underline my praise.
Norris Church Mailer: (Former Artistic Director at Provincetown Repertory Theatre) The Wound of Love, directed by Gregory Fletcher, was a resounding critical success, due in large measure to Greg’s bold and imaginative use of the small space we had for a theater.
Anne Meara: (actress, playwright) I first met Gregory Fletcher as a stage manager during the Off-Broadway production of my play After-Play. He created a warm and trusting relationship with all of the actors and crew so that everyone felt supported, protected, and safe to do their best work. In a stage manager’s nightmare when two actors were out sick with only one understudy to cover, Greg prepared Alice Spivak in only one rehearsal, and the show went on. Trusting Greg completely, I invited him to work in our business office where he has proven to be invaluable in organizing many projects and keeping our lives in order.
When I discovered Greg was also a writer, I found his plays to display a strong ear for dialogue, a wonderful sense of humor, and a very strong sense of theater. Then, I saw a production of Summer and Smoke that Greg directed, a play he directed Off-Off-Broadway with my daughter, Amy, and another play at Provincetown Rep. All of the productions were extremely creative, well done, and pure theatre. As I told the Boston Globe, “I wouldn’t pass up a chance to see Greg’s work; he’s wonderful and talented.”
David Pumo: (theater critic, nytheatre.com) “The short and very amusing Roast Beef and the Rare Kiss by Gregory Fletcher opens Series C, the perennial short plays festival of new works, produced by Off-Off Broadway’s Emerging Artists Theatre. The play begins with a kiss. We then realize that the two people kissing are not a couple, but rather each is part of another couple, and the two couples are spending an evening together at one of their homes. The rest of the play is nervous choreography as the two who kissed try to deal with what they have just done, while their partners bounce in and out of the room, cleaning up after dinner and making popcorn for the movie they rented. There’s a delightful and clever twist at the end.”
Jack Rushen: (playwright) For the premiere production of my play, Oedipus For Dummies [at Off-Off Broadway’s Center Stage], I found Greg to be an incredibly imaginative, hard working and very positive director. Everyone he works with, from playwright to actor, feels like they have taken a wonderfully creative journey.
Jenny Sandman (theater critic for OOBR) [Off-Off Broadway Review] Excerpts from her review: “Ted LoRusso’s Hallelujah Breakdown is a fun way to spend an evening. Gregory Fletcher’s direction is deft and rated with the highest ‘box score’ of outstanding, and his choreography of Jesus and a teenage boy dancing a pas de deux is really fabulous. The ensemble acting is excellent and appears to be full of some of the best young actors Off-Off Broadway. Highly recommended.”
Marian Seldes (actress) As my colleague and friend, Greg created and maintained a congenial professional atmosphere for the cast and crew of Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women on a national tour in 1995-96. With his amazing ability to plan and anticipate, and when necessary, to solve problems, he was integral to the company.
George Sklar: (playwright, novelist, & a founder of the Theatre Union) Greg’s production of Elizabeth Swados’ Runaways was a boldly imaginative, pulse-rousing, theatrical high, one of the most dynamically theatrical evenings I’ve experienced in the last decade. As long as there are talents with the innovative and creatively theatrical minds of Gregory Fletcher at work, I have no fear for the future of the fabulous invalid.
Kate Snodgrass: (artistic director, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre) At Boston University, I found Greg to be an impressive teacher, well spoken, extremely prepared, and very much at ease in the leadership role. It is no surprise that his students (English 202–Intro. to Creative Writing) expressed their appreciation and admiration for him in their semester evaluations. Some of them maintained that he was the best teacher they had had so far at Boston University. He is also an extremely promising writer, a kind and generous critic, and an excellent revisionist. He’s knowledgeable, personable, a true man of the Theatre, and he’s funny, too. I recommend him without reservation as a playwright, director, and as a teacher.
Howard Stein: (Retired Chair, Hammerstein Center, Columbia University’s School of Arts) Greg’s work is adventurous, courageous, enterprising, and responsible, as well as diligent, devoted, and the star of his class. He is blessed with that rare talent, the talent to develop one’s talent, and is equally possessive of a rare value system that honors and promotes appetite rather than ambition. He is an exceptional observer, a developed listener, and an indefatigable worker. I admire his production abilities, his unrelenting ability to complete tasks, his outstanding ability to direct and write, and his gift of coordinating the efforts and tasks of his fellow collaborators. He was one of the major successes I enjoyed as chair from 1982-1992. He is first class talent and a first class human being. For many ways, he has been our model student. His sense of responsibility as a director and as a human being is total. There is nothing of the whining, complaining, blaming, or excuse-making in his character. He is outstanding and I would support him all the way.
Jerry Stiller: (actor) Gregory Fletcher has a knack for organizing and presenting things so that everything is clear, logical, and orderly. He has been a tremendous help to my wife and I since 1995. He is also a gifted playwright and director. I did a reading of his play Edenville and then later in 2006 saw it fully produced Off-Off-Broadway. The play was heartfelt, funny, and wonderfully theatrical. With his direction of Summer and Smoke in 2001, I can still see today, in my mind’s eye, vivid striking images of his staging. The first time I saw Summer and Smoke, it was a star vehicle centered around Geraldine Page. With Greg’s exceptional production, the play was the star, and every role was important down to the smallest non-speaking walk-on. Not only was I taken with the strong sense of community and ensemble work, but also I was impressed how his ensemble of undergraduate actors was able to truly capture the world of the early 1900’s. The production was as thrilling and every bit as good as the infamous Geraldine Page revival. Greg is a true man of the theater and outstanding in every way. He’s a mensch.
Lynne Taylor-Corbett: (Tony nominated director & choreographer) I worked with Gregory Fletcher as ASM on the workshop of my Lorca Project and was so impressed that I asked him to PSM an Off-Broadway play I directed, Women on the Verge of HRT by Marie Jones. Afterwards, he was snapped up by the GM for yet another show. His people skills are the best. He’s organized, efficient, tough; you just fall back and there he is to catch you. He is sharp as a tack and generous with his knowledge and his time. He is also a riot. I cannot say enough; it’s so nice to blow the horn for someone who is really as terrific as this man.