Press Release

Called Girl
by Gretchen VanAken
Dates:January. 11,12,18 &19 at 8:00pm and January. 13 at 2:00pm.

She was visiting her beloved grandfather, the funeral director,when she lost her first tooth. Excited,and a bit concerned, the little girl asked, "Grandpa, will the tooth fairy know I'm here?" "Yes," her grandfather reassured her, the tooth fairy would leave something very special under her pillow that night."I want a pair of red toe shoes!" whispered the budding performer to her doting grandfather. The next morning, she found a carefully written IOU from the tooth fairy.Red toe shoes, after all, were not common request. When she again spent the night with her grandfather,an exquisite pair of red toe shoes awaited beneath her pillow .Pirouetting gracefully in the glow of candlelight around a closed casket in the repose room of the funeral parlor, the little girl in the red toe shoes danced for her grandfather. She was destined to dance on Broadway.

The little girl who grew up in a funeral home and went on to be a Broadway actress is Gretchen van Aken Johnson of Ponte Vedra Beach. She later earned master's of divinity at Yale, was ordained a Methodist minister, and, in the1990s, served as campus minister at Jacksonville University and the University of North Florida. She eventually became executive director of the Sanctuary of Northeast Florida before retiring in 2002.Alongtime community activist, she currently serves as vice president of Compassionate Friends and is a member of the Jacksonville Human Rights Commission, Faith in Action, United Way, the Homeless Coalition, the Jacksonville Community Council Inc. and ex-officio chaplain for the Mayor's Victims Assistance Advisory Council after a lifetime of stellar performances, both on stage and in the pulpit, Gretchen van Aken Johnson is now performing in her original one-woman show titled "Called Girl."

Her premiere performance at La Villa School of the Arts had the audience alternately laughing and weeping, as van Aken (her stage name) presented monologues and musical vignettes of a life rich windiest on everyt hing from burial to baptism to breast cancer, marriage to divorce to remarriage, motherhood to sisterhood (the clerical variety), and belting out some of her signature tunes from Broadway, van Aken captivated her audience with her inspirational, insightful and often hilarious remembrances."It's the big sermon," she noted to friends, following the performance. "I've learned that God's light always shines in the darkness." Show dates are Jan. 11,12,18 &19 at 8:00pm and Jan. 13 at 2:00pm.

All tickets are $12.00 • call 249-0289 for reservations.