Her career as a playwright has thus far been uniquely devoted to issues of race and ethnicity from a strongly Afro-centric point of view. Gretchen explores the sensitive boundaries between race and culture with humor, candor, and lots of little known historical data.
Her new play, "AL SHARPTON FOR PRESIDENT," was recently read at the famed "PLAYERS" on Gramercy Park in NYC to a racially mixed and very enthusiastic audience and cast.
Actor, Director and Producer, Rome Neal, Artistic Director at the Nuyorican Poet's Cafe in New York City and solo star of Laurence Holder's play, "MONK," played the role of Dick Gregory.
He thanked Ms. Law for her voice in "holding up the causes of
black people."
Actor Charles Turner, who starred with James Earl Jones in the Broadway production of "On Golden Pond," played the part of Josiah Henson, the freed slave on whom Harriet Beecher Stowe based her novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. He referred to Ms. Law as "not only a great writer, but an important one," and thanked her for writing a play that he hoped would go on to have an important future in American theater and culture.
In a meeting with Gretchen in the fall of 2005, Reverend Sharpton described the play as ”a real testimony to our struggle as Americans and as black Americans—the kind of stories we always need to hear more of.”
Again, in June of 2007, Reverend Sharpton met with Gretchen in full support of a production of the play.
The President of the neighboring National Arts Club,
Mr. James Aldon, sat in on the reading. He referred to Gretchen as "a gifted playwright." He resonated with Gretchen's "take" on Reverend Sharpton as an exceptionally bright, capable and important, if often misconstrued, voice in national and international leadership.
Gretchen’s work has been read at The National Arts Club, NYC, The Harlem Theater Company, The “Players” in NYC, and the National Black Theatre Festival.
She is completing an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s
“The Adventures of a Black Girl in her Search for God”
with the permission of the Shaw Estate.
Gretchen works closely with Actor, Director and Producer,
Herman LeVern Jones whom she met some years ago when her work was being read at the National Black Theater Festival
in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Mr. Jones co-founded the Festival, which is held in Winston-Salem every other year and draws up to 85,000 attendees; including the late Mr. Larry Leon Hamlin, Executive Producer. Her play, “Al Sharpton for President,” was read to Mr. Hamlin in a private reading in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 4/05.
It was chosen as a semi-finalist in the esteemed Eugene O’Neill summer Playwriting Festival in 2006.
Mr. Woodie King Jr., Founding Artistic Director of
The New Federal Theatre, NYC, described her Sharpton piece as “incredibly well written.”
Broadway Producer, Mr. Ashton Springer, stated “the play really moved me as a black man.”
Readings of her works have been directed by
Herman LeVern Jones, Kim Rubenstien, David Downing
and the late Randy Frazier.
Ms. Law is a member of the Frank Silvera Writer's Workshop
in Harlem, NYC and The Dramatists Guild.
She is a practicing psychotherapist, Lecturer at the
Yale University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and has been a United Church of Christ Pastor since graduating from Yale Divinity School in 1978. She graduated from the Columbia University School of Social Work in 1987.
In 1991 she founded The Parents' Foundation in New Haven, Connecticut; a thirty-two bed transitional living apartment and group-home facility for adults with psychiatric illnesses.
She resides in Guilford, Connecticut and in Brooklyn, New York.
