By Donnetta Lavinia Grays

Directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton
Featuring ensemble member Namir Smallwood

April 6 – May 14, 2023
in the Downstairs Theater

Monique is on the run. From what, she will not say. Showing up on the doorstep of her sister’s Brooklyn brownstone with her timid daughter Sam—and without her husband—their arrival raises more questions than it answers. As the specter of their abandoned life in Georgia creeps back into focus, the family is forced to consider what must be sacrificed to break a cycle of despair. Poetic and heartbreaking, Donnetta Lavinia Grays’s stunning portrait of Black Love explores what it takes to nurture family in an often-cruel world. MORE INFORMATION HERE

John Cameron Mitchell stars as Joe Exotic, with Kate McKinnon as Carole Baskin. It also stars Kyle MacLachlan, Brian Van Holt, Sam Keeley, Nat Wolff, Marlo Kelly, William Fichtner, Dean Winters, and David Wenham The eight-episode series will debut on March 3. Donnetta serves as Executive Story Editor on the series and penned epsiode 106. Tune in!

FX's Y: The Last Man is now streaming on Hulu. The show stars Diane Lane, Ashley Romans, Amber Tamblyn, Ben Schnetzer, Olivia Thirlby, Marin Irleand, Elliot Fletcher, and Juliana Canfield. Donnetta is thrilled to have collaborated with this writing team led by Showrunner Eliza Clark. Be on the lookout for episode 104 entitled Karen and Benji  (which Donnetta penned).

Donnetta is honored to hold the 2022 Omi Osun Joni L. Jones Visiting Performance Artist Residency. Hosted by UT Austin's African and African Diaspora Studies Department. Monday, February 21—Wednesday, February 23, 2022

With all events open to the public! Click HERE to RSVP.

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Monday, Feb 21: Performing Blackness from Both Sides of the Page, or Queerness in Quarantine: A Public Conversation

12-2 pm CST

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Tuesday, Feb 22: Writing as the Actor:  A Writing Workshop

2-4 pm CST

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Wednesday, Feb 23: A Reading of When Leaves Sound Like Water

3-6 pm CST

 Thornton Wilder’s THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH follows one “everyfamily” through the great struggles and triumphs of the human experience. Led by innovative director Lileana Blain-Cruz in a production that speaks directly to our current moment, this Pulitzer Prize-winning classic with additional material by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins is a profound reminder that life is always worth living – no matter how difficult things get. Donnetta (as Fitzpatrick) joins a superb cast of 28 led by James Vincent Meredith and Roslyn Ruff as Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus, Paige Gilbert and Julian Robertson as their children, Gabby Beans as Sabina, the family maid, and Priscilla Lopez as the Fortune Teller. BUY TICKETS HERE

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Donnetta joins authors Alice Green, William Patrick, James Ivory, Emily Bernard, Huma Abedin, José Rivera
Liara Roux, Colm Tóibín, Fabian Ferguson, Rachel Gross, Sharr White, Judith Heumann, Colson Whitehead, Tiffany Jewell, and Gary Shteyngart as part of New York State Writers Institute Spring ‘22 line up. 

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7:30 p.m. Monday, April 4
Staged reading
Arena Theatre, UAlbany Performing Arts Center
1400 Washington Avenue, Albany NY 12222

Free and open to the public. Masks required.

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Playwright-actor-director Donnetta Lavinia Grays presents her play-in-progress, "Kudzu Calling," a celebration of Black Southern love that is at once familial, spiritual, and queer. Commissioned by Alabama Shakespeare Festival, "Kudzu Calling" seeks to “expand and complicate the Southern narrative for the American stage.” 

The Literary Ancestry Essay Series (Curated by playwright Dave Harris) aims to create a collection of personal craft essays by living Black playwrights about the non-living Black playwrights that live on in their work. For this series, we commissioned playwrights to pick one play by a non-living Black playwright and write about how this play impacted their artistry. The essays in this round are written by Vivian J.O. Barnes, Gethsemane Herron-Coward, Nathan Alan Davis, Donnetta Lavinia Grays, and Dave Harris.

https://www.roundabouttheatre.org/literary-ancestry-essay-series

4:00 pm EST

October 3, 2021

MORE INFO

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Ingredients for Alchemy: Page, Stage & The Performance of Literature

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Join us for a discussion featuring five Whiting Award winners: playwright Jordan E. Cooper (Ain’t No Mo’, The Ms. Pat Show); actress and playwright Donnetta Lavinia Grays (Where We Stand, Last Night and the Night Before); poet and nonfiction writer Joshua Bennett (Owed, Being Property Once Myself)); playwright Sylvia Khoury (Power Strip and – premiering in New York this fall – Selling Kabul); and fiction writer Steven Dunn (water & power, Our Migrations). The event will be moderated by poet, playwright, nonfiction writer, performer, and dramaturg Lauren Whitehead, who adapted Ta-Nehisi Coates’ award winning memoir, Between the World and Me, for staging at the Apollo Theater, the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts and for the TV adaptation on HBO.