His play Hit the Wall was produced by The Inconvenience as part of Steppenwolf Theater Company's Garage Rep in 2012. It made the Chicago Tribune's "Top Ten Plays of 2012" list. It went on to be produced off-broadway at Barrow Street and in many cities around the country, including a sold out and three times extended 2015-2016 production in Los Angeles at the LGBT Center that was nominated for many "Best of the Year" awards in LA.
In 2014, he wrote Exit StrategyArchived 2021-01-21 at the Wayback Machine for Jackalope Theater. Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune called it "at once poetic, political, sad, funny, timely, complex and compassionate, Ike Holter's thrilling, beautiful new play Exit StrategyArchived 2021-01-21 at the Wayback Machine is the story of the desperate final days of a condemned, crumbling Chicago public school dreading its upcoming prom date with the cruel bulldozers from City Hall." The play has also been produced at Philadelphia Theater Company and Off Broadway at Primary Stages Theater in addition to regional productions in Boston, Los Angeles, Houston, and other cities.
His later plays have included B-Side Studio (2013),[7]Exit StrategyArchived 2021-01-21 at the Wayback Machine (2014),[1]SenderArchived 2021-02-26 at the Wayback Machine (2016)[8]The Light Fantastic (2018) and The Wolf at the End of the Block (2017).[9] The Goodman premiered Lottery Day in the spring of 2019, the capstone to the seven-play "saga" about a fictional Chicago neighborhood called Rightlynd.
In 2018, the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) selected Holter as one of six finalists for the Harold and Mimi Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award, recognizing playwrights for the best scripts that premiered professionally outside New York City during 2017, for his play The Wolf at the End of the Block.
