Alexis Greene, Dramaturg, Author, Friend—RIP
It’s with deep sadness that I announce to friends and colleagues that my dear friend and agency client Alexis Greene died on Sept 10, age 80, at her apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan. She had been suffering with ALS since November 2025. An In Memoriam website devoted to her life and career can be found via this link. Her husband Gordon Hough sent this with the sad word of her passing:
“Her life’s work was about and for women in the theater. She was a dedicated and passionate historian and scholar, an author or editor of eleven books and many articles on the theater, a reviewer of productions on Broadway and in every other venue where plays are staged in NYC, a Tony-voter, a co-founder of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of America, a site visitor for the National Endowment for the Arts, a member of the board of the League of Professional Theater Women, and a teacher of theater at NYU, City University, and the University of Bridgeport. She was withal a vibrant personality, an eager gardener—and a wonderful cook. I am blessed that she was my ever-so-loving wife for nearly forty years.”
Alexis and I began working together in 2019, when longtime publishing friend Cathy Hemming referred her to me. She came to me with two challenges. First, Alexis hired me to edit her manuscript on the playwright and director Emily Mann. At that point, the project was under contract to Southern Illinois University Press which, unfortunately, was going to require her to make a subvention—a payment—to facilitate publication. While editing the manuscript with her, I introduced her to publishing lawyer Robert Solomon who helped extract her from the contract, and then as her agent, I undertook efforts to place the book with a commercial publisher, which I did, licensing it to Applause Theater and Cinema Books. Emily Mann: Rebel Artist of the American Theater was published in November 2021. It got some excellent reviews, like these:
“Underscores, for theatre-makers, students, and researchers alike, the potential of performance as a radical force for change.”—Journal Of American Drama And Theatre
[An] excellent biography. Alexis Greene has written a lively and fascinating book about an important theater artist—artistic director, director, and playwright Emily Mann.”—Third Coast Review
In 2023, Alexis and Emily Mann conducted a conversation at the Princeton Public Library, which is preserved on youtube.
Sometime later, Alexis was commissioned to write a history of a notable theater company in Washington, D. C., the Shakespeare Theatre Company, which was published as Shakespeare Theatre Company: The History of a Classical Theater (Peter E. Randall Publisher, September 2025). My adult son M. G. Turner and I were honored to edit the manuscript for Alexis.
Late last year, Alexis told me that she had been diagnosed with ALS, news that she conveyed to me with amazing equanimity and surprising good cheer. She set about putting her affairs in order, and enlisted me to work with her on two writing projects she wanted to see published in what she anticipated would probably be the last months of her life.
The first was a memoiristic essay, “Live Theater— An Incomparable Art Form,” which I read and edited with her,. then arranged to be published in The Arts Fuse, where it appeared last February. She wrote, in part,
“I fell in love with theater when I was nine years old. I was growing up in New York City, and in the fall of 1954, friends of my mother took me to see the Broadway musical Peter Pan, starring Mary Martin as Peter and Cyril Ritchard as the villainous Captain Hook. It was the first time I’d ever been inside a theater, and I loved where we were sitting: in a box on the right side of the magnificent Winter Garden Theatre. I loved the show, and I especially adored Margalo Gillmore, who played Mrs. Darling, the loving mother of the children whom Peter Pan invites to fly with him to Neverland. I was entranced by the gowns that Mrs. Darling wore—I wanted to be an actress….Eventually, I found my true calling: writing and editing books about theater companies and theater artists, especially women. All of these vocations intensified my love for live theater.”
The other was a poem, titled, “Love’s Mantle,” for which I arranged publication in The Seaboard Review of Books, in a feature package headlined Two Poems to End the Winter, alongside a poem of my own, “Creature Comforts.”
Snow descends in icy flakes,
Coating the hills and drifting ’round lakes.
Covering houses and fields and trees,
Snow whitens the world as far as you can see.
Cold to the touch.
Wet on your skin,
Snow, winter’s blanket,
Protects the life within.
Far beneath the drifts and mounds,
Animals burrow, cozy and warm.
All winter long they dream animal dreams,
Of running through grass, swimming in streams.
Digging deep holes is gopher’s reverie,
While building dams is beaver’s fancy.
Chipmunk sleeps with her store of food,
and skunk spends winter in a dozing mood.
Cold to the touch,
Wet on your skin,
Snow, winter’s blanket,
Protects the life within.
Far beneath the coat of snow
Flowers and plants wait to grow.
Nestling deep in the rich, dark ground,
Seeds yearn for spring and the call to rebound.
The lily awaits a sunny day,
When the snow becomes dense, then melts away.
Lily and iris, dandelion and clover
Will reach toward the sky when winter is over.
And you, sleeping soundly in our snow-covered home,
Do you dream of spring and places to roam?
What do you yearn for, as there you lie?
How will you grow? Will you reach for the sky?
Warm to the touch,
Soft on the skin,
Love, the truest mantle,
Protects life within.
Alexis’s ability to speak was affected by her condition, but even with that, we stayed in regular contact, sometimes on the phone, often via text or email. As I look back on my devices now, I see that barely a week went by without us exchanging frequent messages. In May I visited with her and Gordon at their handsome book-lined apartment, and the three of us had a delightful conversation. Later, in the summer, I told her about a new theater book I had licensed to Applause Books by our agency client Shauna Kelly, I’ve Got the Shakes: Performing Richard Foreman. Unexpectedly, she proposed to write a review of the book, which I promised to try and place in a suitable publication. She quickly read Kelly’s book and in little more than a week wrote a thoughtful 1,100-word review that distilled the rich content in Kelly’s oral history-style book. Bill Marx, editor of the Arts Fuse, agreed to publish it. It ran on July 2, under the headline, “Voices From Inside Richard Foreman’s Ontological Theater.” She closes it with these words: 
“Foreman’s theater was not a theater of plays with linear structure, psychologically motivated characters, and realistic scenic design. Rather, Kelly’s book describes and evokes for theater lovers the experimental and stimulating body of work in which Foreman shaped a different vision of theater, with a vibrancy all its own.”
I am so glad that in the last months of her life I was able to help her publish her autobiographical essay on live theater, the poem, “Love’s Mantle,” and her review of I’ve Got the Shakes, along with her biography of Emily Mann and her history of the Shakespeare Theatre Company. On October 18, in New York City there will be a celebration honoring the memory of Alexis Greene, which I will be honored to attend. Without question, she was one of the most valued friends I’ve made in my decades-long publishing career.
As a coda to this tribute, I also want to share a poem that my son M. G. Turner wrote in honor of Alexis. Please read it below.
On the Passing of a Woman of the Theater
by M. G. Turner ©
We heard today she died,
The great woman of the theater
Who though she did not grace the stage
Wrote decorous and illuminated books
Upon the life of its art,
Thus making her a scholar
Of drama, tragedy, farce, and comedy
Perhaps even clown and parody
But now the curtain has slipped, dropped,
Descended, and the audience
Wanting more insightful demonstrations
Begrudgingly rises from its seats
With her still on their minds:
Alas she’s with the bard now,
Her heart beat its last to the thrum
Of his iambic pentameter
Which softly ended
All revels and revues.
