Gretchen Cryer

Gretchen Cryer, born Gretchen Kiger on October 17, 1935, in Dunreith, Indiana, is an American actress, playwright, and lyricist. The daughter of Louise Geraldine (née Niven) and Earl William Kiger Jr., who sold school supplies and operated a home printing business, Cryer studied English at DePauw University. It was there, in a music class, that she met composer Nancy Ford, a partnership that would define much of her professional life and establish the two as the first female composer-lyricist team to work in both Off-Broadway and Broadway theater.

Cryer and Ford's earliest collaborations began at the university level, with For Reasons of Royalty produced at DePauw and Rendezvous staged at Boston University. Their first professional New York production, Now Is the Time for All Good Men, arrived in 1967. A politically charged piece inspired by Cryer's pacifist brother, who worked as a teacher in a conservative midwestern high school, the show received poor notices from critics. Cryer performed in the production under the pseudonym Sally Niven — her mother's maiden name — playing the lead role opposite her then-husband, David Cryer.

The duo's next project, The Last Sweet Days of Isaac, opened in 1970 at the Off-Broadway Eastside Playhouse, featuring Austin Pendleton and Fredricka Weber. The rock musical centered on a young musician who, believing himself close to death, commits fully to living. The production earned widespread critical praise and won the Obie, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards.

Cryer and Ford moved to Broadway in 1973 with Shelter, staged at the John Golden Theatre under the direction of Austin Pendleton. Marcia Rodd received a Tony Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical for her work in the production. The show later received an Off-Broadway revival at the York Theatre in 1997 and a concert production at 54 Below in 2017, the latter featuring Cryer's son, actor Jon Cryer.

Their most commercially successful collaboration was I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road, which opened in 1978 and drew directly from Cryer's own life experiences. Cryer both co-wrote and performed in the show. Though critics were initially cool toward it, the production built an audience through word of mouth, prompting producer Joseph Papp to transfer it from his Public Theater in lower Manhattan to the Circle in the Square Theatre, where it ran from December 14, 1978, to March 15, 1981. The cast recording earned a Grammy nomination, and the show toured extensively, running for a year each in Los Angeles and Chicago, where it won the Joseph Jefferson Award for Best Musical in 1980.

The Cryer-Ford collaboration extended across decades. Their musical Einstein and the Roosevelts had its premiere at DePauw University in October 2008.

As a Broadway performer, Cryer appeared in Little Me in 1962, 110 in the Shade in 1963, 1776 in 1969, and Shelter in 1973. Her screen work includes a role in the 1987 film Hiding Out, in which she played the aunt of her real-life son, Jon Cryer. More recently, she appeared in two episodes of the Broadway Podcast Network's audio drama Around the Sun, written by Brad Forenza, as part of the series' fourth season in 2024.

In her personal life, Cryer and David Cryer divorced in 1971. She has three children: son Jon Cryer, a film and television actor; daughter Robin, who has performed with her in cabaret productions; and daughter Shelley, a theatrical makeup artist. Cryer is a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma.