Doug DeVita

FULL LENGTH, 63 pages.

FABLE is a play about memory, legacy, and the battle over storytelling. Who has the right to tell your story — especially when two legendary show business sisters remember it differently?

June Havoc was famously antagonistic about GYPSY, the Broadway musical her sister, Gypsy Rose Lee, called her legacy. But in FABLE, a fable about the making of that musical fable, their sisterly bond is tested in a mounting clash of fiction and truth. As June — now aging and confronting her own mortality – relives rehearsals, dressing rooms, and backstage conflicts, she fights to reclaim her narrative before it’s rewritten forever.

“I think it is absolutely brilliant. It was fascinating to me because of course I was a part of it, but it was the appeal that 'Gypsy" has that [Doug] capitalized on and brought forth in a very delicious way.”
– Lane Bradbury, Dainty June in Gypsy, 1959

FULL LENGTH, 87 Pages / For sample pages and/or information about licensing / purchase visit Next Stage Press: https://www.nextstagepress.com/the-fierce-urgency-of-now/

WINNER Fresh Fruit Awards of Distinction for Outstanding Play and Outstanding Production
SEMI-FINALIST: We Screenplay Spring 2021 Diverse Voices Competition

"The writing is fresh, funny, and smart without striving for hilarity. It hits where it's meant to hit."
– Nancy Worssam, ArtsStage-SeattleRage

This fast-moving comedy follows art director Kyle as he tries to discover his real self amid the power struggles and skewed priorities of a high-powered New York ad agency. After an office restructuring puts him in a new creative group run by the megalomaniac homophobe Kate, he finds an unlikely ally in copywriter Dodo, a living-legend from the era of “Mad Men” who not-so-gently prods Kyle to the uncomfortable but inevitable realization that “It’s time to take off. And soar.”

An abridged audio version is currently inaugurating the Fresh Fruit Festival's Radio Play Series; a link to the stream is in the "Music Samples" below.

FULL LENGTH, 80 pages.

In GODDESS OF THE HUNT — a fast-paced, gleefully twisted comedy — grieving widower Charlie Windsor strikes up a spontaneous friendship with the magnetic and mysterious Diana Black-White in a Midtown Manhattan theater bar. Their instant bond unsettles Charlie’s childhood best friend, Broadway actor Ed McGrath, and soon Charlie is swept into a surreal tangle of dark secrets, shifting loyalties, and dangerously performative personas.

What begins as a quirky new connection spirals into a mythologically infused showdown, blurring the lines between grief and obsession, truth and performance. A modern homage to 1960s romantic thrillers — filtered through the warped lens of contemporary social media oversharing — GODDESS OF THE HUNT explores what happens when privacy dies and every connection might be a trap.

FULL LENGTH, 70 pages / Contact me for a perusal copy.
Co-written with Gary Lyons. Based on an idea by Gary Lyons.

SEMI-FINALIST; Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference, 2006

Available for licensing/purchase from NEXT STAGE PRESS: https://www.nextstagepress.com/just-a-rumor/

Rosalynne Buchanan and Graham Harris are two Hollywood legends whose dynamic on-screen chemistry sparked an off-screen affair lasting 25 years. In 1968, a few weeks after completing their latest film together, Graham dies in the early hours of the morning in the house they both share. Rosalynne (Ross) has no choice but to inform Graham’s wife Leslie of his death. What happens when Ross and Leslie meet for the first time is the premise of “Just A Rumor,” a play that explores the nature of love, celebrity, gossip, truth, and how to get a dead movie star out of the kitchen.

FULL-LENGTH, 88 pages.

This bold reimagining of E.M. Forster’s "A Passage to India" draws out the desires Forster could only imply. Told in storyteller-theatre style, it follows Dr. Aziz, Cyril Fielding, Adela Quested, and Mahmoud Ali as their forbidden passions clash with the rigid codes of colonial society—with heartbreaking consequences for all of them, shattering illusions of friendship, empire, and the safety of silence.

To be published by NEXT STAGE PRESS, October 1, 2026

FULL LENGTH, 78 pages / For sample pages and/or information about licensing / purchase visit Next Stage Press: https://www.nextstagepress.com/nell-dash/

"We had our annual Playwrights Retreat where we read ...NELL DASH... It was the highlight of the weekend. ... there is a great deal of comedy coming from every corner of the dingy world it so effectively creates."
– Kim T. Sharp | [Former] Associate Artistic Director, Abingdon Theatre Company

In the alternate London of 1820 during the reign of King Stanley V8, Elinor and Marianne Wood, the illegitimate daughters of Sir Henry Dashwood and his cook, have become Nell Dash and Nance. They find themselves whirling up against Fagin, The Artful Dodger, Miss Havisham, Celia and Polly Peachum, and a barber named Todd, among many others. Their vile half-sister-in-law Lady Fanny Ferrars Dashwood, stops at nothing to keep them from getting a single penny of the fortunes accrued from the Dashwood Meat Packing Empire whilst at the same time trying to attain the two strands of pearls given the girls when they fled Devonshire years before, pearls which have mysteriously disappeared and have a strange history of their own.

FULL LENGTH, 97 pages / For sample pages or information about licensing / purchase visit Next Stage Press: https://www.nextstagepress.com/phillies-trilogy/

WINNER: Fresh Fruit Award of Distinction, Outstanding Production
WINNER: Scrap Mettle Arts Emerging Playwrights Competition
FINALIST: Davenport Theatrical Reading Series
SEMI-FINALIST: Barrington Stage Company Burman New Play Award.
SEMI-FINALIST: Normal Avenue's New American Play Series
SEMI-FINALIST: Campfire Theatre Festival 2020

"In the canon of works that include The Boys in the Band, Torch Song Trilogy, and Falsettos, DeVita’s play Phillie's Trilogy will stand proud… and equal”
– Bob Green

Growing up in the “fabulous” 70s was no picnic for precocious budding writer Phillie McDougal. But despite the nuns, the priests, bullying classmates, and his parents, he lived to tell the tales, with results no one bargained for. Including him.

Developed at the Kennedy Center (with Jacqueline Goldfinger) and at ESPA/Primary Stages (with Rogelio Martinez.)