Donnetta Lavinia Grays is a Brooklyn-based playwright who proudly hails from Columbia, SC. Her plays include Where We Stand, Warriors Don’t Cry, Last Night and the Night Before, Laid to Rest, The Review or How to Eat Your Opposition, The New Normal, and The Cowboy is Dying. Donnetta is a Lucille Lortel, Drama League, and AUDELCO Award Nominee. She is the recipient of the Helen Merrill Playwright Award, National Theater Conference Barrie and Bernice Stavis Playwright Award, Lilly Award, and Todd McNerney National Playwriting Award. She is the inaugural recipient of the Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award. She is currently under commission from Steppenwolf, the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, WP Theater, and True Love Productions.
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Last Night and the Night Before
REGGIE
Now see you gonna laugh. Cause you thank everythang I do is funny. It ain’t funny. It’s meant tah teach ya. How I speak? That’s meant tah teach you too. You get older ‘n leave this place...one thing ya gonna remember is the music of ya daddy’s voice. The memory ‘a what made ya. How ya people survived. An’ these little games we play? These little hand games? That’s your history too… ‘cause ya grandmama sat ya mama down when she was smaller ‘n you ‘n they played these games ‘n had the best time that ever was. Then, ya mama taught me ya know that? Shoot, I ain’t wanna learn no little girl games. Imma man! (Laughs.) What I look like playin’ some little girl hand game! But, then we had you. And I taught you. That’s a road map. You ever get lost, you find ya way back home (points to his chest) from them. Understand? And one way or another... I’ll come get you.
Last Night and the Night BeforePremiered in2019 -
Where We Stand
MAN
We make it sweet with a collective breath of joy - and suffering too - but mostly joy, yeah?
Old men’s stories from front porches cast off into the wind blending with
The factory whistle marking the end of the day.
That curious scent children have after recess.
Echoed laughter.
A fried something or a something baked from ya mama’s kitchen.
Dogs barking and the perfume of changing seasons.
That’s this air... Familiar. Sweet. Air. Familiar.
You thinkin’ this air gon’ sour.
You thinkin’ “ain’t no mo’ sweet left to hold!”
But, air made of more than what’s been broke.
Where We StandPremiered in2020 -
The Review, or How to Eat Your Opposition
NAOMI
I’m interested in…the grey. The immediacy of it. Not the careful blending of black into white. But, grey as in the ashes of things.
(The Madonna in Nagasaki appears)
Their ruins. Or, when what we thought was order collides with...chaos.
(The Moment Before appears)
The result of that. I make art out of destruction to remind us of the chaos itself. That’s my life’s work. Somewhere in between what we aspire to be and what we once were…is the truth of who we really are. What might you gain if you simply allowed yourself to live inside of that? Would you even recognize yourself?
The Review, or How To Eat Your OppositionPremiered in2018
"Where We Stand is experienced as a charismatic feat; in some magical way it feels as though Grays is reciting the entire play directly to you, while never breaking eye-contact. This drugging, bewildering quality comes from the contact-high great performance can give you." ―Helen Shaw, Vulture
"Where We Stand reveals a community on the precipice of a big decision . . . With sensitivity and classically great storytelling skills, Grays asks us to reconsider our notions of justice and revenge, and the perilous chasm between them." ―Zachary Stewart, TheaterMania
"Where We Stand is a gem of a show. It sparkles from every direction you shine a light on it. Whether it is on playwright Donnetta Lavinia Grays’ lyrical yet powerful writing style, director Tamilla Woodard’s inclusive and imaginative staging, Grays’ compelling and charismatic stage presence in this one-person show, or the thoughtful and absorbing questions the play poses, there is a glow from every facet the light hits." ―Donna Herman, New York Theater Guide
Selected Works
In the plays of Donnetta Lavinia Grays, verse, music, and ritual create a living, present-tense connection. Her stories emerge through a painstaking process of stripping away accumulated fictions held by the characters themselves, as if the truth can emerge only through excavation. Grays uses every part of a theater space and fills it with oratory; she courageously asks a moral engagement from her audience. Her portrayal of family – its complicated manifestations of love, its convoluted sense of responsibility – feels revelatory; we come to know her characters as deeply as anyone in our lives.