David Greenspan

David Greenspan is an American actor and playwright born in 1956 in Los Angeles, California. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Drama from the University of California at Irvine and has since built his career in New York City, where he lives with his partner, painter William Kennon. His Broadway appearances span from 2002 to 2009 and include the play A Royal Family and the musical Hairspray.

Greenspan began premiering original works in New York as early as 1986, when The Horizontal and the Vertical debuted at HOME for Contemporary Theatre and Art. Over the following years, HOME served as the venue for several additional world premieres, including Dig a Hole and Bury Your Father, Jack, Principa, The Home Show Pieces, and 2 Samuel 11, Etc. His work expanded to other prominent institutions throughout the 1990s, with Dead Mother, Or Shirley Not All in Vain premiering at the NYSF/Public Theater in 1991, Dog in a Dancing School at Dance Theater Workshop in 1993, and Them at Actors Theater of Louisville that same year. She Stoops to Comedy premiered at Playwrights Horizons in 2003, earning an Obie Award Special Citation that year. The Argument, which premiered at Target Margin Theater in 2007, received an Obie Award Special Citation in 2008.

In 2009, Greenspan collaborated with Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields on a musical adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline, directed by Leigh Silverman, which had its world premiere at Manhattan Class Company in New York. The Myopia, described as an epic burlesque of tragic proportion, premiered at The Foundry Theatre in 2010. Go Back to Where You Are and Jonas both premiered in 2011, at Playwrights Horizons and Transport Group respectively, as did a production of Jump at the Under the Radar Festival at the NYSF/Public Theater. I'm Looking for Helen Twelvetrees premiered at Abrons Arts Center in 2015, and The Bridge of San Luis Rey had its world premiere at Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey, in 2018, followed by a Miami New Drama production in 2019 in which Greenspan performed the role of Uncle Pio and also served as director.

As a performer, Greenspan has taken on a range of roles across New York theater. He played Francis Flute in A Midsummer Night's Dream at Classic Stage Company in 2012 and Dr. Richard Harvey in Punk Rock at MCC Theater in 2014. He gave solo performances of Strange Interlude for Transport Group in 2017 and The Patsy for Transport Group in 2011, the latter earning an Off Broadway Alliance Award nomination for Best Special Event and an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination for Outstanding Solo Performance. His solo work continued with On Set with Theda Bara at The Brick in Brooklyn in 2023 and I'm Assuming You Know David Greenspan at the Atlantic Theater in New York in 2025.

Greenspan is the recipient of six Obie Awards. These include an award for Sustained Achievement in 2010, Special Citations for She Stoops to Comedy in 2003 and The Argument in 2008, and performance awards in 2007 for Some Men and Faust, as well as a 1996 performance award for Some Men by Terrence McNally. In 2002, he received the Herb Alpert Award from the California Institute of the Arts. His collection The Myopia and Other Plays, published by the University of Michigan Press in 2012, won the Lambda Literary Award for Drama in 2013. He has also received playwriting fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation, the Charles Revson Foundation, the Playwrights Center's McKnight Fellowship in 1993, and a Lucille Lortel Foundation Fellowship in 2006. An alumnus of New Dramatists, Greenspan was included in the 2022 book 50 Key Figures in Queer US Theatre, profiled in a chapter written by performance scholar Nick Salvato.