John Bernos got to take part in “the amazing legacy” of the Purple Rose Theatre last spring with a role in Murder on the Links. | Sean Carter Photography
For John Bernos, the dream of a career on the stage started here in Ann Arbor. At Pioneer High, sports were his passion—until he discovered the Pioneer Theatre Guild. His focus intensified when he won FutureStars, a singing competition between students from Ann Arbor’s public high schools.
He went to college in California and did a stint choreographing for the Disney Channel and dancing at Disneyland before heading to New York to study acting and work off-Broadway. When the pandemic hit, he came to Ann Arbor to wait it out. “I felt so much peace back home,” he says. Soon, he became a personal trainer at Liberty Athletic Club and a teacher at Dancer’s Edge in Dexter. And after meeting Lana Dumanetskaya, whom he married in July, he knew he was here to stay.
But moving back hasn’t meant forgoing acting opportunities. There are theaters affiliated with the Actors Equity Association union in nearby cities—Dexter, Chelsea, Northville, and Detroit—to help make that possible.
Bernos, who once worked for the Mouse, made his local debut in Disney’s Frozen at the Encore Musical Theatre Company in Dexter. And last spring, he got “to be part of this amazing legacy that is the Purple Rose Theatre” in Chelsea with a role in Murder on the Links, an experience that excited and intimidated him at first. “I saw shows there growing up,” he reflects.
Related: Murder Most Charming (April 2026)
In January, Bernos returns to the Purple Rose in David MacGregor’s Mildred Whiskey, where secrets surface when four people are trapped in a run-down Detroit bar on a foggy night.
Before that, he plays the newlywed Fitzwilliam Darcy in The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley, a sequel to Pride and Prejudice by Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon, at Northville’s Tipping Point Theatre. “It’ll be fun doing an English accent,” Bernos says, “and my wife is a huge Pride and Prejudice fan. She’s ultra-excited.”
Katherine Banks, who trained in theater at U-M, began her career in Chicago, a theater-saturated city. After working there for ten years, she returned in 2014 when her husband got a job at U-M. And just as it did for Bernos, Tree Town became a theater town for her, too.
While teaching drama at Greenhills School, she did shows at Performance Network Theatre during its final season, Williamston Theatre in central Michigan, and Tipping Point.
“I travel away from Michigan for short stints for on-camera work, as well as some live spokesperson gigs,” she says, “but I don’t audition for theater gigs out of town because I enjoy focusing on my family and my teaching career when I’m not engrossed in a show.”
She’s currently back at Tipping Point in Aurora Real de Asua’s one-woman show, Aping Jane, which runs through October 18. “It’s about the life of Jane Goodall, told by the animals and people around her,” says Banks. “You see Jane at the beginning and end, and in between, you meet a whole cast of characters—her mother, sister, scientists, chimps.” Banks’s roles? Jane, and the more than twenty other characters in the play.
Although the move from Chicago meant that there was less work available for Banks, she finds the work she does completely satisfying. “It’s a smaller pond here,” she says, “but I have been thrilled with the artistic caliber of the productions I’ve been able to be a part of.”