"It's a very big epic piece taking on the nature of America," the younger Schwartz told Playbill On-Line (Dec. 2003) about the production slated for to open April 3 for a run through April 25 at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts in Palo Alto, CA. The three-act play with music is based on the novel by Willa Cather of the same name. "It's set in the late 1800s, around 1885-1886, and it's about a young American boy named Jim and this girl who immigrates to America from Bohemia," Schwartz revealed. "It is sort of their love story though they never actually get together. So, I suppose their bittersweet love story, you can call it. It's about the immigrant experience in America, it's about memory and the America spirit."

The cast of My Ántonia includes Jessica Meyers, Ian Leonard, Michael Butler, Cass Morgan, Lianne Marie Dobbs, Richard Bolster, Anne Buelteman, Louis Parnell, Joseph Ribeiro, Woody Taft, Kurt Gravenhorst, Nancy Sauder, Mich Tagas, Jordan Lund and J. Hayden Williams.

The work is adapted and directed by Scott Schwartz and features original music by Stephen Schwartz. Both are currently represented on Broadway by Golda's Balcony and Wicked.

Scott Schwartz is known for his directing on works including the musicals Jane Eyre, Bat Boy and tick, tick...Boom!. The patriarch Schwartz has composed the musicals Pippin, Godspell, Working and Children of Eden.

For tickets to My Ántonia at TheatreWorks' Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, call (650) 903-6000. For more information, TheatreWorks is on the web at http://www.theatreworks.org.