Last Night and the Night Before

By Donnetta Lavinia Grays
Directed by Valerie Curtis-Newton

When Monique and her 10-year-old daughter Samantha show up unexpectedly on her sister’s Brooklyn doorstep, it shakes up Rachel and her partner Nadima’s orderly New York lifestyle. Monique is on the run from deep trouble and brings their family’s Southern roots with her, grabbing hold of Rachel’s life more ferociously than she could have ever imagined. Poetic, powerful and remarkably funny, this 2017 Colorado New Play Summit featured play explores the struggle between the responsibilities that are expected of us and the choices we actually end up making.

Donnetta Lavinia Grays is a Brooklyn-based actor and playwright. Her plays include Laid to Rest (2017 Kilroys – List Honorable Mention, 2017 Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep), The Review or How to Eat Your Opposition (2018 WP Pipeline Festival), The New Normal and The Cowboy is Dying. She is a two time Eugene O’Neill Theater Center National Playwrights Conference Finalist, a 2018 Space on Ryder Farm Working Farm Resident Playwright, a 2016-2018 Time Warner Foundation WP Playwrights Lab Member and is the inaugural recipient of the Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award. She is also a Civilians R&D Group, an Actors Studio Playwright/Directors Unit and terraNova Collective Groundbreakers Playwright group alumna. Her work has been read or developed by Berkeley Rep, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, The Labyrinth Theater Company, New York Theater Workshop, Orlando Shakespeare Theater, Portland Stage Company, among others. Check our her portfolio.