Brian Mani News

Watch director James DeVita discuss CYRANO DE BERGERAC at American Players Theatre!

A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE by Arthur Miller plays at American Players Theatre's Touchstone Theatre until October 22, and the critics are weighing in!

CYRANO DE BERGERAC at American Players Theatre's newly renovated Hill Theatre is a timeless romance filled with wit and heart-stopping action.

Photo Coverage: THE UNEXPECTED MAN at American Players Theatre, featuring Sarah Day as The Woman and Brian Mani as The Man.

THE UNEXPECTED MAN at American Players Theatre in Madison, Wisconsin features Sarah Day as The Woman, and Brian Mani as The Man, with direction by Laura Gordon.

American Players Theatre (APT) announces its 38th Summer Festival Season, June 10 - October 22, 2017, a diverse lineup of eight classical and contemporary plays in repertory that includes the return and work of visiting Chicago director and Jeff Award-winner William Brown taking on Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters in APT's newly renovated flagship 1140-seat outdoor amphitheater on the Hill. 

Votes are cast; polls are closed; and results have been tabulated! This was our biggest year yet! After a record number of voters in more than 75 regions worldwide, BroadwayWorld is very excited to announce the 2016 Madison winners! Thanks to all who voted, and huge congratulations to all the winners!

Willy Loman (Wonderfully portrayed by Brian Mani) is a phony, a faker. He may very well be aware of this fact, and yet...he may not. Who among us has not a time or two filled in the blank spaces of our memory?

   Endgame is an amazing ride…I have no idea what it's about.

In a stellar setting at the Touchstone Theatre in Spring Green, a superb American Players Theatre (APT) cast plays out Samuel Beckett's Endgame. An uncomfortable production to watch on stage, Director Aaron Posner breathes humor and touching life into Beckett's classic one act tragicomedy, a treatise on the end of personal and possibly global life. The desolate, tiny room, which was noted by Beckett himself in the original stage directions to be completely empty, was designed void of any beauty except for a lone terrarium filled with sand and a few artifacts from the lost, viable earth along with loose pages and stacks of books, where Beckett's characters barely survive.

Arthur Miller's 1949 Pulitzer Prize winning play Death of a Salesman might be considered by critics the most influential play of the 20th century. American Players Theatre presents a visceral, gut-wrenching production at the Up the Hill Theatre, the scenery drenched in depression glass colored green.: A green bedspread on a tarnished brass bed, a green ice box stands behind a humble green table and four chairs. Envisioned by Scenic Designer Michael Ganio, did he and veteran Director Kenneth Albers infer Willy Loman suffer from depression, was green with envy for his his brother Ben and friend Charley? Or did this particular hue represent the institutional green characterizing hospitals and mental asylums in the '40's and '50's symbolizing the breakdown between a person's memory and reality that Willy and his family struggle with?

Quite refreshing and revitalizing as a summer breeze, American Players Theater (APT) opened their 2016 Up the Hill season in Spring Green with a wild version of William Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. Directed by the well-known David Frank, this condensed Comedy revisits a slight nod to Lewis Carroll's 'The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland.' The production plays broadly by quoting  Shakespeare's verse with a tongue in cheek delivery also heightened by Victorian costumes designed by Fabio Tablini.  The imaginative designer envisioned two Dromios which might resemble Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, clothed in wide striped pants, vivid colored jackets and huge straw hats. The story set amid an Ephesus where square marble columns and a great gate placed on the left Up The Hill stage fashioned by Scenic Designer Nayna Ramey, gives Ephesus a rather dream like quality. 

American Players Theatre (APT) announces its 37th Summer Festival Season, June 3 - October 16, 2016, a diverse lineup of eight classical and contemporary plays in repertory that includes the return and work of two visiting Chicago directors: Derrick Sanders, founding Artistic Director of Congo Square Theatre Company directing The African Company Presents Richard III by Carlyle Brown in APT's intimate 200-seat Touchstone Theatre; and Jeff Award winner William Brown taking on William Shakespeare's King Lear in APT's flagship 1140-seat outdoor amphitheater on the Hill.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL is currently running at Milwaukee Repertory Theatre through December 24, 2015, and BroadwayWorld has a first look at the cast in action below!

American Players Theatre (APT) is excited to announce its 37th season, which will run June 4 to October 16, 2016. In APT's flagship outdoor amphitheater, William Shakespeare will bookend the Hill season with The Comedy of Errors and King Lear. Also playing on the Hill: Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde and Arcadia by Tom Stoppard.

On June 15, 1975 at Vogel Hall in the (then) Performing Arts Center in downtown Milwaukee a new theatre company took to the stage to offer its first performance and Milwaukee Chamber Theatre was born. The production was George Bernard Shaw's DON JUAN IN HELL and it featured Robert Ingham as Don Juan, William McKereghan as the Devil, Ruth Schudson as Dona Ana and Montgomery Davis as the Statue.

American Players Theatre (APT) will launch its 36th Season tonight, June 6, 2015 with a preview performance of William Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor. The performance begins at 8:00 p.m. Tickets are still available.

American Players Theatre (APT) will launch its 36th Season June 6, 2015 with a preview performance of William Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor.

?American Players Theatre (APT) announces its 36th Summer Season, June 6 to October 18, 2015, a diverse lineup of eight classical and contemporary plays in repertory that includes the work of two visiting Chicago directors: Derrick Sanders, founding artistic director of Congo Square Theatre Company, makes his APT debut directing The Island by Athol Fugard, John Kani and Winston Ntshona in APT's intimate 200-seat Touchstone Theatre; and Jeff Award winner William Brown returns to direct Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire in APT's flagship 1148-seat outdoor amphitheater Up the Hill.

This December, Milwaukee Repertory Theater relives a 39-year old tradition in the beautiful Pabst Theater: Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. In this recent adaptation by Joseph Hanreddy and Edward Morgan, familiar English carols and melodies echo through the theater so the audience believes they might be standing on the streets of London, Christmas Eve, mid-1800's. Director Aaron Posner returns to inspire another Ebenezer Scrooge, Milwaukee's own Jonathan Smoots.