DeVita, James

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DeVita, James

Personal

Born in North Babylon, NY; married; children: one son, one daughter. Education: Suffolk County Community College, A.A., 1983; University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, degree, 1987.

Addresses

Home—Spring Green, WI. Office—American Players Theatre, P.O. Box 819, Spring Green, WI 53588. E-mail—[email protected].

Career

Novelist, playwright, and actor. First Stage Children's Theater, Milwaukee, WI, resident playwright; American Players Theater, Spring Green, WI, actor, 1995—; also performed in Australia, Japan, and Germany. Worked as a first mate on charter boats, Long Island, NY; volunteer with Spring Green, WI, Emergency Medical Service.

Awards, Honors

Shubert Fendrich Memorial Playwriting Contest, for Looking Glass Land; Distinguished Play Award, American Alliance of Theater and Education; Intellectual Freedom Award, Council of Teachers of English/Language Arts; National Endowment for the Arts fellowship; Chorpenning Award, American Alliance for Theater and Education, 2007, for body of work for young audiences.

Writings

NOVELS

Blue, Laura Geringer Books (New York, NY), 2001.

The Silenced, Eos (New York, NY), 2007.

PLAYS

The Christmas Angel, Dramatic Publishing (Woodstock, IL), 1998.

Excavating Mom, Dramatic Publishing (Woodstock, IL), 1999.

The Swiss Family Robinson (based on the novel by Johann David Wyss), Eldridge Publishing (Tallahassee, FL), 2002.

The Three Musketeers (based on The Three Guardsmen by Alexandré Dumas), Baker's Plays (Quincy, MA), 2002.

The Rose of Treason: A Fictional Dramatization Based on the True Story of Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, Anchorage Press Plays (Louisville, KY), 2003.

Dickens in America, produced in Milwaukee, WI, 2006.

Henry IV: The Making of a King, produced in Spring Green, WI, 2008.

(And director) The Desert Queen, produced in Spring Green, WI, 2008.

Also author of Waiting for Vern, Zero Tolerance, Bambi: A Life in the Woods, A Little House Christmas, Treasure Island, Looking Glass Land, Arthur: The Boy Who Would Be King, Wonderland!, Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Trials: The Story of Joan of Arc, Beth, and A Midnight Cry: The Underground Railroad to Freedom.

Sidelights

Award-winning playwright James DeVita is the author of the young-adult novels Blue and The Silenced. A professional actor for more than twenty years, DeVita has toured throughout the United States as well as in Germany, Japan, and Australia. He also serves as the resident playwright at First Stage Children's Theater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and is a member of the acting company at the American Players Theater in Spring Green, Wisconsin. DeVita has written a number of plays for young audiences, including Looking Glass Land, based on Lewis Carroll's classic story, and Trials: The Story of Joan of Arc.

DeVita's debut novel, Blue, is a middle-grade fantasy about a boy who undergoes a bizarre transformation. Morgan lives an uneventful life with his dull parents until one fateful night when a talking marlin appears to him in a dream. Soon, scales begin to appear on Morgan's body, and he develops a sudden taste for anchovies. After his parents rush him to the hospital, the boy is submerged in a huge tank which allows doctors to study Morgan's budding dorsal fin. When surgery is planned to remove the growth, a group of strange, human-marlin hybrids invade the hospital and attempt to rescue the boy.

Reviewing Blue, Michael Cart wrote in Booklist that DeVita "handles the Kafkaesque details of Morgan's metamorphosis with humor and conviction." Some critics questioned the motivation behind the protagonist's ready acceptance of his new condition, School LibraryJournal critic Alison Follos remarking that "there's never any driving cause that explains his need for such a dramatic transformation."

DeVita's second novel, The Silenced, was inspired by a study of Sophie Scholl, the young woman who organized one of the first resistance movements in Nazi Germany. (DeVita also wrote about Scholl in a play titled The Rose of Treason.) In a Curb online interview with Sarah Fortin, the writer remarked that The Silenced is "ripe with parallels to many modern-day political issues." "A lot of people think I'm writing about what happened in our country and the world in the last six, seven years," he added. "What really is frightening is I wrote about something that happened 60 years ago or more. And that we're drawing parallels to that, I think is scary."

Set in a dystopian future society ruled by the Zero Tolerance Party, The Silenced centers on teenaged Marena, who lives with her father and brother behind the walls of a "social readaptation community." While attending a youth training facility designed to reeducate citizens, Marena slowly begins to recapture memories of her mother, a revolutionary who was forcibly removed from their home years earlier by the authorities. Along with Dex, her boyfriend, and Eric, a defiant newcomer, Marena forms the White Rose, a resistance movement, to combat government oppression.

A critic for Kirkus Reviews praised DeVita's novel, calling The Silenced "tautly plotted," and Eric Norton, writing in School Library Journal, noted that "young adults will certainly empathize with the characters' conflicts between self-expression and a desire to fit in." "Gripping suspense combined with satisfyingly capable teen characters make this a good YA read," concluded Kathleen Isaacs in her Booklist review of The Silenced.

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 15, 2001, Michael Cart, review of Blue, p. 1557; June 1, 2007, Kathleen Isaacs, review of The Silenced, p. 62.

Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2007, review of The Silenced.

Kliatt, July 1, 2007, Myrna Marler, review of The Silenced, p. 10.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, November 18, 2006, Damien Jacques, "A Tale of 3 Plays: For Dickens Fans, It Is the Best of Times"; June 9, 2008, Damien Jacques, "Tactical Move: APT Actor, Director Join Forces to Create a Stronger, Single Piece from 2-Part Henry IV."

Publishers Weekly, April 16, 2001, review of Blue, p. 66.

School Library Journal, May, 2001, Alison Follos, review of Blue, p. 149; September, 2007, Eric Norton, review of The Silenced, p. 194.