He has said that attending a performance of Sweeney Todd at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis at the age of eleven inspired him to pursue a career in theater.

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.

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 Strategy Archived 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."

[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.

[11] In 2021, Holter is developing a TV miniseries about the 1983 election and tenure of Chicago mayor Harold Washington, the first African American to hold the office.