Donnetta Lavinia Grays

Donnetta Lavinia Grays is the author of Where We Stand (Lucille Lortel, Drama League, AUDELCO and Broadway Black award nominee), Last Night and the Night Before, Warriors Don’t Cry, Laid to Rest and The Review or How to Eat Your Opposition. She is the recipient of The Whiting Award for Drama, Helen Merrill Playwright Award, The National Theater Conference’s Stavis Playwright Award, Lilly Award, Todd McNerney National Playwriting Award, and the Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award. Donnetta holds commissions with Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, WP Theater and True Love Productions. For television, she has staffed on Spectrum’s Manhunt, FX’s Y: The Last Man, served as Executive Story Editor on Joe Vs. Carole for Peacock, and is currently co-producer on Seconds for AMC.

Broadway acting credits include The Skin of Our Teeth, In The Next Room, or the vibrator play and Well. Off-Broadway: Where We Stand (WP Theater/Baltimore Centerstage), Men on Boats (Playwrights Horizons/Clubbed Thumb) O, Earth (The Foundry Theatre), In the Footprint (The Civilians – as an Associate Artist) and Shipwrecked! An Entertainment (Primary Stages). Film: The Book of Henry, Wild Canaries, The English Teacher and The Wrestler. TV: Recurring roles on New Amsterdam, Happy, Rubicon, Mercy and Law and Order: SVU, and guest starring roles on High Maintenance, The Night Of, Blue Bloods, The Blacklist, A Gifted Man, Law & Order, Law & Order: CI and The Sopranos. Ms. Grays proudly hails from Columbia, South Carolina. B.A. College of Charleston. MFA UC, Irvine.