Greg Kotis

Greg Kotis is an American playwright and Broadway book writer, born in 1965 or 1966, best known for creating the book and co-writing the lyrics for Urinetown: The Musical. The show earned him two Tony Awards in 2002, for Best Book of a Musical and Best Original Score.

Kotis studied political science at the University of Chicago, where he participated in the improvisational and sketch comedy group Off-Off Campus. A course on the Short Comic Scene prompted him to leave the university and pursue a career in theater. He went on to join both the Cardiff Giant Theatre Company and the Neo-Futurists. In 1995, the same year he married writer and actor Ayun Halliday, Kotis relocated to New York City, where the two established a branch of the Neo-Futurists together. To support himself while working in fringe theater, he took a job as a location scout for the television series Law & Order.

The idea for Urinetown originated during a financially strained trip to Paris in 1995, when Kotis found himself having to ration visits to the city's pay toilets. He began writing the musical around 1998, at a point when he and Halliday had a daughter and the pressures of supporting a family had led him to consider abandoning theater altogether. He conceived of Urinetown as a final creative effort before committing fully to location scouting. The musical ultimately received ten Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical, Best Director, Best Original Score, Best Book of a Musical, Best Actor in a Musical, two nominations for Best Actress in a Musical for Nancy Opel and Jennifer Laura Thompson, Best Featured Actress in a Musical, Best Choreography, and Best Orchestration. The production has since been staged in hundreds of American cities and in venues around the world.

Beyond Urinetown, Kotis has written several other theatrical works. His play Pig Farm premiered at the Roundabout Theatre in New York City in June 2006. The Truth About Santa premiered at The Kraine Theater in New York City in 2008 and was revived at The Tank in 2018. His play I Am Nobody also premiered at The Tank but was forced to close after three previews and three performances due to the COVID-19 pandemic. His musical ZM premiered at Teatro Milan in Mexico City in 2024, directed by Miguel Septiem, the artistic director of Icaro Teatro. His post-apocalyptic bluegrass musical The End of All Flesh premiered at the wild project as part of the New York City Fringe in 2025 before transferring to the Magnet Theater following a sold-out run. Kotis has also collaborated with his theatrical partner Mark Hollmann on Yeast Nation (The Triumph of Life), a prequel to Urinetown, and is developing a sequel titled Good Luck In Space, intended to complete what he envisions as the Urinetown Trilogy.

In his personal life, Kotis and Halliday have two children, India, born in 1997, and Milo, born in 2000. The family lives in East Harlem. Kotis and Halliday are co-founders of Theater of the Apes and perform together in its monthly improvised bluegrass musical, The Wayfaring Strangers.