American Players Theater’s Dontrell, Who Kissed the Sea Runs Through September 25: Universal Experience based in the Black Experience (Part 2 of 2)
Above: Tyrone Phillips, the director of Dontrell Who Kissed the Sea (l) and Derrick Moore who plays the title character. Below: A scene from Dontrell Who Kissed the Sea
by Jonathan Gramling
The American Players Theater is on a roll. In June, they were the first Wisconsin theater company in 60 years to receive a first Tony Award, the 2026 Regional Theatre Tony Award. And it continues to forge ahead in its efforts to provide diversity in its programming by featuring works of playwrights of color while also having diverse casts in its Shakespearean and other classical plays.
In 2026, APT is offering Dontrell Who Kissed the Sea by Nathan Alan Davis. Derrick Moore plays the lead role of Dontrell in a play that explores the Black experience through dreams to reveal universal truths about humanity. It is a story that is told, on some levels, through family dynamics.
“The play works on a number of different levels,” Moore said. “You have Dontrell trying to get to this dream. You have mom trying to get Dontrell to college. You have a dad who is present, but not vocally. You have his younger sister who is, in a way, dealing with what that dream is passed down to. Everyone has a connection to water in this play. And we surmise because of this lineage of what the transatlantic slave trade was. Robbie is sort of the outside eye of what the family is dealing with. He is someone who creates balance of the family. ‘Hey, this kid is going to be alright. He’s been this way this whole time. He’s going to be fine.’ Shea, who is Dontrell’s cousin who works at an aquarium — everyone has an attachment to water — this is how she is working through that pass down thing. And she has been Dontrell’s interpreter for these dreams for a very long time. She is the person whom Dontrell confides in the most. And then you have Erika who is sort of Dontrell’s love interest who ignites that flame for him to really press forward to pursue this dream.”
And Moore finds that the play Dontrell has parallels to his own life story.
“The play speaks to my life,” Moore said. “I resonate with Dontrell in his pursuit and his ambition to acquire something that has stayed with him during day dreams and night dreams. I really resonate with that part of Dontrell and his ambitious pursuit and focused pursuit to accomplish that. Very early as an artist, you piss your parents off. ‘Hey, I’m going to become an actor.’ ‘Ahhh!’ And then there is this blind pursuit to do it. And you move everything out of your way. But as time progresses, you get wiser in what that pursuit is. I see a version of this play 10 years down the line where Dontrell is very, very clear, very, very in alignment and smart in how he conducted this stuff around him. My mom had reservations. I was a physical therapy major. I was in college. I made it a little bit further than Dontrell did. I got to campus. But I recognize that moment for anyone, for any child who is looking to carve their own way. There is a level of resistance. My mother resisted in her own way.”
And while Dontrell is deeply rooted in the Black experience, it is also about the shared history and humanity of all Americans. It is a shared history that Tyrone Phillips, the director of Dontrell, understands quite well.
“We all have a shared history of what it means to be American,” Phillips said. “The foundation is not so pretty. We all know that there are some cracks in the foundation, some blood, sweat and tears. And usually in our society, we like to put a rug over it and just keep walking. This play asks us to remove that rug and truly from the beginning, even the prologue that we’ve added to the piece, the question to ask is, ‘How did we get here? How did Black bodies get to this land’ at a very fundamental level. And so when you look at the transatlantic slave trade, when you look at the real issue, it was people selling people for goods. They are items. They are actual things. And so the question there is, ‘Why did it happen? How did that happen?’ I found it fascinating in my research to find out that weapons were introduced to Africa for that reason. Other tribes would sell members of other tribes in order to get weapons. That was the part where I said, ‘Let’s look at humanity.’”
It is the responsibility of Phillips to harness all of these lived experiences and emotions of the actors into the structure that is the play.
“I think the question is, ‘How do you guide them towards the vision,’ Phillips asked. “What I love about this play with all of these actors, even the ones who are interns and are coming and learning the craft and what it means to be a professional artist, you’re allowed and you should have opinions about your character. You should come into the room with a point of view. And it’s for me to get. What I love to do is make sure that the core of the character is intact. In casting, I normally handle that. If I cast the spirit of the character, then it doesn’t matter because whatever choice they make is valid. It’s really about that earlier part of the process before you’re even casting. I want to make sure I have the artist in the room who is going to make those choices that are truly centered in the character.”
In the end, it isn’t phillips out there performing on stage. And so he has to bring the story out through the actors and wehat they are feeling about their characters.
“As I am talking, the easiest part for me is ensemble building,” Phillips said. “I’m really good at empowering the group to be creators with me. Of course there is a master plan. The designers have been working on the plan a year before I even get to the rehearsal room. There are things that are established. But there are tools in a part of the playground that we help actors use and they come alive. I love building ensembles because at the end of the day, the designers and I are not seen by the audience. They don’t talk to us usually. They meet the play through the eyes of that ensemble, that cast. So for me, empowering them and making sure that each of them are in their roles and doling that to the best of their abilities, that’s the easy part.”
And it is the real emotions that often time give fuel to the play.
“The emotion is a tempo thing for me,” Phillips said. “For me, it’s like, ‘Oh, are you there? We have to keep moving. The play has to keep going.’ When the emotions come, there is a lot of work that leads up to that moment, whatever it might be. And so, for me, I never get in the way of it. If the play is naturally speaking to this person and every time they get emotional here, yes they have to say the words. You have to hear them. They can’t just burst out in tears. But we ujse and channel that emotion and never take it away. Something’s happening. That’s good. You’re listening to the play and it is affecting you. There is a moment in this play where I know if we are locked in or not based on whether it is happening or not. If the actors are actually listening to each other and we build this thing and we are at this scene, I know here it is. It’s overwhelming. They have to become that person and not just be acting that person, listening as that person, grieving as that person. I had a great professor who taught us that we laugh and cry on the same vibrations. Our body goes through the same physical response when we are laughing really heavily and when we are crying really heavily. How interesting is that? How fascinating? So for me, I also say great joy is also really hard to truly put up on stage. Most of the time, tragedy is one thing. But the joy is sometimes actually harder to preserve and make authentic on stage. This play, thank God, has a wonderful balance of both.”
It is because the actors put their own emotions and experiences into the characters, that each performance is unique.
“As long as they are in the same play, looking at each other and giving the magic of live theater, we will never be in trouble,” Phillips said. “There is nothing like seeing humans connect right in front of you on stage, that magic that happens, truly listening, truly responding. Feeling like the story could go in any direction at any time is something that I love as a director. I always ask my able designers, ‘How do we keep surprising our audience?’ I don’t want anyone to sit down and say, ‘I know where this is going.’ How do we keep surprising them on the journey of this play that is told beautifully.”
And within the basic storyline and the dialogue is a very entertaining play.
“This play has music,” Phillips emphasized. “It has comedy. It has dance. It has it all. It has that Shakespeare treatment. What I would also say about our playwright, the play is very poetic with verse at some points. He also has the ensemble doing some great physical work. For example, the heartbeat is something that we hear the ensemble say. It’s a very, very driven ensemble driven tease. We do the story and we’ve got it. There is music throughout the whole piece. But there is a moment where I am really excited because it’s that moment where I think no one has ever seen anything like this on stage before. And that is happening here at American Players Theater.”
Dontrell Who Kissed the Sea is about America. It is about you and me.
For information and tickets, visit engagement@americantheater.org.