James DeVita News

American Players Theatre presents CRYANO DE BERGERAC, a funny, poetic romance. It runs at the Hill Theatre until October 6!

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

Writers Theatre Artistic Director Michael Halberstam and Executive Director Kathryn M. Lipuma announce the first Gillian Theatre production of the 2017-2018 season - Quixote: On the Conquest of Self, written by Monica Hoth and Claudio Valdes Kuri, English Translation by Georgina Escobar, directed by Kuri, and featuring Henry Godinez as Don Quixote, September 27 - December 17, 2017.

We meet Elise (Kat Wodtke) in her office. Her husband, Brad (Jeb Burris) is away, in Iraq, fighting. She keeps her cheery disposition and hopefulness by finding rituals to survive it all and sticking to them.

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. 

Laura Ingalls Wilder's classic book Little House on the Prairie (1932) became famous as an hour-long TV drama in the 70s (1974-1983) starring Michael Landon and featuring Melissa Gilbert in her acting debut as Laura. The books, as well as the TV show, are forever popular. In fact, the TV show runs regularly on cable channel Insp Monday through Friday. Sierra Madre Playhouse and its artistic director Christian Lebano have chosen to bring back James DeVita's stage adaptation of the stories as its holiday presentation, first seen in 2014, A Little House Christmas, skillfully directed by Alison Eliel Kalmus and featuring a delightful cast of 10, is now onstage in its revival of a West Coast premiere, through December 23.

Verge Theatre has announced its programming for December 2016. See a full season schedule below:

James Devita has written a heart warming story for the holidays, based on the Books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. 

One of my favorite things in seeing all the shows I do is to stumble upon one that I like to refer to as 'alchemy'. It's that rare instance where all of the elements, the script, actors, director, set, costume, lights, music, etc all come together in just the right way and at just the right times to form pure gold. It may look like science or technical expertise but it's really just magic. One of those shows is ACT's current production of Christopher Hampton's 'Dangerous Liaisons'. If in seeing this show you are not able to have a thrilling night then you're just not paying attention.

Could life be portrayed similar to a steaming cup of tea that eventually grows cool, and finally stone cold? That premise represents one possible physical property of energy, specifically heat, in Tom Stoppard's 1993 play titled Arcadia. At American Players Theatre (APT) Up the Hill stage, Stoppard's contemporary, complex and cunning production poses the duality to life and questions theoretical polar opposites such as order versus chaos. In this absorbing and provocative play where the heat of romantic love interferes with life's scientifically charted course, where the unpredictable and predetermined meet, this APT cast features excellent poetic form when playing what Stoppard also contemplated: 'It is a defect of God's humour that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.'

The popular Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse returns to First Stage for Kevin Kling's theatrical adaptation of Kevin Henkes best selling children's book beginning this May. A picture book written in 1996, Henkes' story features a tiny little girl mouse struggling to be who she is, wearing glitter sunglasses and mismatched outfits--as Lilly called herself, 'The Queen of the World' who liked everything' and in 2016, celebrates 20 years still tucked firmly in children's hearts.

Perhaps only someone looking from the the outside can see more clearly than those living on the inside of the United States. This principle operates with brillant clarity when Milwaukee Reperatory Theater presents the World Premiere American Song by acclaimed Ausstralian author and playwright Joanna Murray-Smith. The Rep commissioned the play almost four years  iago in 2012 and then opened on the Quadraccie Powerhouse stage this past weekend. Set in the America's heartland, a supposedly rural Wisconsin town, American Players Theatre actor James DeVIta gives an incomprable portrayal of a parent in agony, a father in midlife named Andy.

Milwaukee Repertory Theater began preview performances of their brand new production AMERICAN SONG. The show is about one man's look at what it means to be a father in today's world.

Milwaukee Repertory Theater has announced an innovative partnership with the Frank Zeidler Center for Public Discussion, having received a $35,000 Art Works Award from the National Endowment for the Arts in support of the world-premiere American Song.

Noel Coward's popular play Private Lives currently on stage at American Players Theatre might be ripped from modern entertainment headlines. These scenes of two recently divorced spouses reconnecting for a romantic tryst could be versions of Duchess Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew living unmarried under one roof (after their long ago divorce) and wishing for royal approval to remarry. Or perchance reminiscent of Gyweneth Paltrow and Coldplay's Chris Martin separating and naming their split a "conscious uncoupling," Coward's 1930 production appears more believable decades later, continually relevant for contemporary audiences.

A college classroom, perhaps set in Ireland because a bottle of Jameson Whiskey appears for the poet to quench his thirst, greets the Touchstone Theatre Audiences at American Players Theatre (APT) in their opening play An Iliad. Outside the classroom rumblings and unrest from unidentified crowds can be heard--Unite James DeVita enters playing the narrator, the poet, the teacher in corduroy pants, tweed suit coat, a woolen vest, pliad tie and white shirt. Similar dress to what the part-time teacher, poet and writer James Joyce, who set contemporary literature on edge with his epic 'Ulysses', the latinized name of hero warrior Odysseus in Homer's 8th century 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey.' Lisa Peterson and Denis O'Hare wrote the stunning 2012 adaptation of 'Iliad' directed at APT by John Langs.

Milwaukee Repertory Theater announces directors, creative teams, and initial casting for 2015/16, a season featuring a Tony Award-winning musical, a play by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Milwaukee playwright Ayad Akthar, and three world premieres.

Five names the magic number. For the past 50 years, Milwaukee Rep has supported the Artistic Intern Program, a rarity throughout the country. In another 5th anniversary worth celebrating, The Rep Artistic Intern Ensemble presented a cohesive, fascinating evening in homage to the theater during their Short Play Festival held in the Stiemke Studio this April. Actors stood in the tiered stands amid the audience and asked: "Think of all the characters you love."

There are two main problems with doing a show about therapy, such as ACT's world premiere of "Seven Ways to Get There" currently playing. First, that someone else's therapy on stage can be good for the author but often times deadly for the audience. Luckily Bryan Willis and Dwayne J. Clark's new play avoids that trap. But the larger trap is that therapy doesn't really have a definite ending so you either portray an unrealistic look at the world of therapy or, as is the case here, the play just kind of ends as the people involved with the therapy continue onward working on their issues. And while the show definitely has engaging characters and performances, that lack of closure and finality for the audience doesn't work out so well theatrically.