An audience at Ring Round the Moon in the Hill Theatre, 2024/Photo by Hannah Jo Anderson

It was the summer of 1980—the first season for American Players Theatre in rural Spring Green, Wisconsin. The company was performing “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” on the hilltop stage. William Borth, who hated Shakespeare, had been dragged to the show kicking and complaining.

It had rained all day, but stopped before showtime. As Puck made his entrance, a mist rolled over the stage until the fairies were “knee-deep in a swirling, firefly-lit fog,” Borth remembers. His partner Bob Kuehlhorn whispered, “Special effects by God.”

Borth became both a fan of Shakespeare and a longtime patron, according to his account in the “Book of Lore,” a history of the theater. The anecdote helps explain why American Players Theatre has managed to survive for forty-six seasons in the Wisconsin woods while fancier, more centrally located, and less mosquito-y venues have closed.

“It’s really kind of a miracle that APT is still here,” says managing director Sara Young. She says a key is the theater’s intensely loyal patrons, who come year after year for works by Shakespeare, Shaw, Ibsen and other classic writers, as well as new plays. They arrange weekends around shows, bringing picnics and school-age children. Then the children grow up and bring their own children.

“Much Ado About Nothing,” 2024/Photo: Liz Lauren

“It’s a really extraordinary group of folks—they’re curious, they go along for the ride, they trust us and we trust them…” Young says. “We actually call our audience the Packer fans of theater.”

This year, APT is again performing “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” when its season starts in June, along with four other plays at its 1,089-seat outdoor amphitheater: Noel Coward’s “Fallen Angels,” William Inge’s “Picnic,” Nilo Cruz’s “Anna in the Tropics” and Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale,” which hasn’t been done at APT since 2009. The company’s indoor, 200-seat Touchstone Theatre will offer the world premiere of core company member Gavin Dillon Lawrence’s “The Death of Chuck Brown,” Yasmina Reza’s “Art,” Nina Raine’s “Tribes” and Patrick Barlow’s “The 39 Steps.”

The theater does no musicals and plays are all performed without microphones, bucking a trend in even small Chicago theaters. Many company members perform in multiple shows in a season. They put up with rain, fog, bugs, bats, hawks, skunks and blazing heat to work for APT, which inspires allegiance in its artists as well as its audience. Some company members—such as artistic director Brenda DeVita and her husband, actor Jim DeVita—have worked here for thirty years and more.

“It’s such a special place,” says Tyrone Phillips, founding artistic director of Chicago’s Definition Theatre, who has directed two shows at APT, most recently “Nat Turner in Jerusalem” last fall. “It’s the place where I rejuvenate and reconnect—you get away from the city, you turn the phone off and it’s a beautiful, beautiful experience.”

Anne Occhiogrosso and Charles Bright speaking at APT’s opening night. 1980. Photo: Robert Wood

History on the Hill

The company was started in 1977 by actor Randall Duk Kim, then an actor with Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theatre, along with his friends Anne Occhiogrosso and Charles Bright. They had a dream of starting a Shakespeare theater and had been impressed with Wisconsin audiences, Young says. They looked at forty different locations around the state, hoping to find a place near a university and a few hours away from urban centers.

Tiny, 1,200-resident Spring Green, located 200 miles from Chicago and thirty-eight miles from Madison, fit the bill. The planned location was on property owned by Helen O’Brien, the “community theater” lady in the Sauk County village, which is also home to architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin estate. O’Brien knew of a spot on the hill that formed a natural bowl for an amphitheater, which would allow sound to travel easily from performers to an audience. “She always thought it would be an amazing place for a theater,” Young says.

Randall Duk Kim (center) at a rehearsal for “Titus Andronicus,” 1980. Photo: Robert Wood

The theater opened in 1980 with productions of the uncut text of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Titus Andronicus.” The budget was sparse. The troupe got free seats from an old Chicago-area theater—audience members were handed cushions as they arrived. “When it rained, those seats would turn your butts red,” Young says. But the quality on stage was solid—APT was nominated for a Regional Theatre Tony Award in 1985.

“It was just so audacious to go out in the middle of nowhere,” Young says. “The idea that had its roots back then and still lives today is that because there’s not much to do here except your work, as an artist, you can focus. There was something brilliant about them dropping this theater into the middle of nowhere, into these woods.”

“It’s a sacred place, truly,” says Phillips. “It reminds me to stay connected to nature, which makes me connected to fellow humans, which makes me able to truly focus on the script at hand.”

Despite critical success, finances in the early years were tough. In 1986, American Players announced plans to close, but was saved by a state loan as well as unusual and enthusiastic community support.

“Someone had a haircut-athon—$5 of every haircut was donated to APT,” Young says. “There were fish boils and a Norwegian dinner. It was really a grassroots effort to get the theater going again.”

Paul Bentzen and Lee E. Ernst in “The Proposal” by Anton Chekhov, 1987/Photo: Zane Williams

In 1985, the theater started adding plays by Anton Chekhov into its repertory, along with Shakespeare, followed by Richard Sheridan and Sophocles. The program really started to open up in 1991, when David Frank took over as artistic director, and Kim and company bowed out and are no longer connected with the theater. “No hurt feelings, but the theater had become something that was not their vision,” Young says.

Frank added Molière and Henrik Ibsen, followed by American writers including Thornton Wilder and Tennessee Williams. The theater started operating in the black, up from a $600,000 deficit in 1986, according to Brenda DeVita, who joined as company manager in 1995 and is now in her eleventh season as artistic director.

Though it has gained a national reputation, with alumni like Carrie Coon and Amy Acker, APT remains “a regional theater at heart,” DeVita says. About sixty percent of its audience comes from a fifty-mile radius, mostly Madison. Another fifteen percent come from Milwaukee, and another fifteen percent from other parts of Wisconsin. Just ten to twelve percent come from Illinois, mostly Chicago.

Back in 1995, DeVita wasn’t looking to settle in rural Wisconsin. When her husband Jim was cast as Romeo and learned he’d have to stay at Spring Green for five months, her first reaction was “Whhhaatt?”

“I ran screaming from a small town in Iowa when I was seventeen,” says DeVita, who was pregnant that first season. “I’m like ‘No, no!’”

But then she sat in the audience and saw how people were leaning forward during the performance in rapt attention. Her husband told her he felt called to be a better actor because of the special, reciprocal relationship with the crowd. “He came home and said ‘I don’t want to work for any other audience,’” DeVita recalls.

James Ridge, Brian Mani and Jim DeVita, “Waiting for Godot,” 2010/Photo: Zane Williams

Also a novelist and playwright, Jim DeVita is the company’s most recognized actor—his roles have included Hamlet, Gloucester, Iago, Macbeth and Leontes.

Previously an actor, Brenda DeVita’s first job at the theater was helping to find housing for everyone. “It’s no joke,” says DeVita. “Come to rural Wisconsin and try to house people for six months.” She credits the community for pitching in, providing bedrooms and small apartments. “The community saved our lives.”

DeVita then became casting director, associate artistic director and artistic director, helping to expand the diversity of the performers and the shows. The company did its first August Wilson play, “Fences,” in 2019. The Touchstone Theatre, built in 2009, allows APT to do more experimental, more diverse and newer plays and offer programming later in the season.

Also under Frank and DeVita, APT added voice and text coaches—one is assigned to each show. Actors are taught to make sense of the words as scripted. They are also trained in dialect, and in how to project in an outdoor space. This includes learning how to bank one’s voice off solid surfaces in the auditorium, to shoot the sound out into the crowd. “It’s a whole-body job,” DeVita says.

Brenda Devita, Artistic Director

DeVita believes it’s crucial for audience members to hear real human voices, unfiltered by electronics. There’s never any doubt who’s speaking when you’re not using mics. The actors get a maximum amount of rehearsal time dedicated to figuring out the best way to tell a story, rather than having to figure out how to work with the technology, DeVita says. This is important for all plays, but particularly Shakespeare, when the language is so rich and often complex.

“These guys really need to know what they’re saying, so you can feel what they mean,” DeVita says, noting that APT Shakespeare productions get about 200 hours of rehearsal. “You don’t want them to not know what they’re saying because they didn’t have time, and they didn’t have time to try it out ten different ways to see how it works.”

“I don’t want to mess with that possibility that this might make someone hear or feel something—the actual human voice,” says DeVita. “We exchange molecules the whole time we’re doing this, and I know the human voice in the space changes the people listening.”

Mark Baker, a patron for forty-four years and a board member, says that by focusing so strongly on the language and the voice, the theater makes classic plays accessible.

“The theater sees it as their job to tell these stories without there being a barrier,” says Baker. He says director David Daniel told him that if the audience doesn’t understand “Oedipus” after they see it at APT, “We’re not doing our job.”

I saw evidence of this work during an intermission in “King Lear” last summer—two women in line for drinks during intermission wondered if the play had been “dumbed down” because it was so easy to understand. It hadn’t been—it was just being performed well.

APT hats/Photo: Jim Sikora

Staying Alive

DeVita says Frank taught her that a crucial art for a theater is to work within its means. This means not overpaying executives, and sometimes buying a new tractor to take care of the grounds when you’d rather hire a particular actor.

It also means reusing, whenever possible, costumes and props from other productions. In the APT’s administrative building are long rows of carefully labeled clothing items, from Grecian togas to medieval-style surcoats to Victorian top hats. There are swords and samovars, metal helmets and ribboned bonnets, tea services and typewriters. There’s even an eerily realistic model of a dead Julius Caesar, his belly bloody and marked with stab wounds, ready for another show when needed.

“I’ve always known where we are financially,” says DeVita, adding that there’s never enough money in any nonprofit to do what people deserve. “We are in a service industry and we are in service to an audience here in the woods of Wisconsin, and we are in service to the artists, who make the art, and that is our job here. That’s how we try to frame it, so we don’t forget that and think it’s something else.”

During the pandemic, American Players joined other theaters in canceling their 2020 seasons. DeVita credits the APT audience and donors with helping them stay afloat. “We have an amazingly loyal audience and that audience knows us, knows our actors, knows our artists, knows our work, knows the property, knows the leadership. And we know them. When things got scary, it wasn’t just us—our audience was scared for us and for themselves, for their theater. The theater didn’t feel alone.”

Sara Young, Managing Director/Photo: Hannah Jo Anderson

When APT announced the season’s cancellation in the spring of 2020, many patrons didn’t want refunds and instead donated their tickets, for a value of more than $1 million, Young says.

Despite the loss of plays onstage, American Players was able to do nineteen different artistic projects in 2020, hiring actors and directors for online performances. Company members worked on new plays and produced “If These Trees Could Talk,” a socially distanced tour of the 110 acres of woodland that makes up the theater property. As they walked the grounds, audience members heard actors’ recorded voices reciting poems and other writings about nature.

“The moment the PPP money [Paycheck Protection Program] came in, we said, ‘We gotta go! We gotta get this money now!’” DeVita says. To keep focused, DeVita stuck a handwritten note above her desk that said, “Hire as many artists as you can. Tell as many stories as you can.” It’s still there.

American Players was able to do plays again in 2021 at about twenty-five-percent capacity, with all crews kept apart in pods to avoid the spread of COVID, instead of the usual commingling of actors and tech professionals for different shows. By the 2024 season, it was back at about ninety-five percent. “So we’re not quite there, but we’re close and we feel really good about that,” says Young.

David Daniel, “The Cure at Troy,” 2021/Photo: Zane Williams

The Play’s the Thing

If you’ve never been to American Players Theatre—be prepared. It requires planning, and preferably a hotel room or a campsite somewhere in the area, so you’re not driving back to Chicago in the pitch dark.

Getting to the space means driving past fields and woodland and along a twisty country road which brings you abruptly to the parking lot—beware of taking a wrong turn at Taliesin. If you get to APT early enough, you can bring a picnic to eat at one of the tables in the wooded area just up the hill from the lot. Gas grills are available. You can also buy food there, or order it ahead of time.

Dress for the weather. Cans of mosquito repellant are set on small tables near the theater for general use. Most audience members take the fifteen-minute scenic, wooded walk up the hill to the theater, but for those who can’t manage the walk, there are shuttle buses. Consider your own strength—I wished I’d gotten a ride when I came to see “The Merchant of Venice” while six months pregnant. The play was great, but the walk up and down caused contractions. Fortunately, the baby stayed put.

APT’s Touchstone Theatre/Photo: Jim Sikora

Whether you walk or ride to the Hill or Touchstone stages, there’s a strong sense of getting away from ordinary life and venturing into another world. Mobile phone reception turns spotty or disappears. Birds are singing; you see fireflies and the sun setting behind prairie grasses and old oaks.

“As soon as you park and get out and start walking to the theater, you feel different,” Phillips says.

Shows can be threatened as well as enhanced by nature. If it rains, the show usually goes on unless conditions are dangerous. Audience members put plastic ponchos over their heads to keep out the wet. There has been actual thunder during the mad scene in “King Lear,” and bats hovering over the stage during Hamlet’s soliloquy.

Other wild creatures try to get into the act. In the “Book of Lore,” Jim DeVita recalled his performance as Rover in John O’Keeffe’s “Wild Oats” when he had an imaginary sword fight, using a cane. Just as he started, a giant, six-inch moth plopped heavily on the stage. Realizing the audience was watching the moth, DeVita decided to use it as his imaginary opponent. “He was very quick,” DeVita said of the moth. “Parried well… He stole the scene.”

Triney Sandoval, Aaron Allen, Sydney Lolita Cusic, Harrison Farmer, Bryant Louis Bentley and Molly Martinez-Collins, “Much Ado About Nothing,” 2024/Photo: Liz Lauren

Heat can be another problem, causing a tough moment during a performance of “King Lear” during a July heatwave. Mark Corkins, who played Kent, had to sit with his legs in stocks directly in the sun for about thirty minutes, wearing a leather cap. His face started turning purple, recalled actor Tracy Arnold, who was playing Regan. According to her account in the “Book of Lore,” Arnold wanted to bring Corkins water, but it would have been out of character for the spiteful Regan to show Kent mercy. A solution was improvised—a goblet was borrowed from a production of “Much Ado About Nothing.” It was filled with water, and the Fool gave it to suffering Kent.

APT communications coordinator Patty Heaston says a lot of factors go into canceling a show due to weather, and a decision is made the day of the show less than two hours before the start of a performance. “If there is lightning, the show is called, but it really depends on the specific time of the forecast and the duration and how that relates to the time of that performance,” Heaston says.

“We’ve experienced all the various degrees of joy and penalty for being in an outdoor theater… Whether it’s the birds or the bats or the thunder appearing at the right moment in time,” says Baker. “There’s nothing better than when the lights go off at the end of the show and you’ve just had that immersive experience, and the stars show up, and you walk down the hill.”

Cold Wisconsin weather means the season for the Hill Theatre must end in early October, though shows in the Touchstone continue into November. For the past ten years, American Players has kept things going off-season with “Winter Words,” staged readings of new plays. They regularly sell out within hours of being announced—this year they sold out in forty minutes.

Chiké Johnson, Lester Purry, Bryant Louis Bentley & Nathan Barlow. August Wilson’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” 2024/Photo: Liz Lauren

This Season and the Future

Tickets went on sale for the 2025 season on March 17 for returning buyers; general sales start April 28.

Asked for highlights of the season, Young says she is particularly excited about the stage design of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” directed by core company member David Daniel. “His idea for the production is like a pop-up book.”

The role of Puck will be played by two people—Joshua Castille, who is deaf and will perform using American Sign Language, and Casey Hoekstra, who will provide the spoken parts. “They, along with David, have developed a weave of those two languages,” says Young. Young jokes that “Midsummer” is like the “gateway drug” for APT—it’s fun to see a play set in the woods while in the woods. The show runs June 7 through October 5.

Another highlight is the premiere of Lawrence’s “The Death of Chuck Brown,” a family story which takes place in Washington, D.C. after the 2012 death of the go-go funk musician. Lawrence will also direct. The show runs June 24 through September 25.

Joshua Castille, “Romeo & Juliet,” 2024/Photo: Liz Lauren

Young says the theater cultivates future audiences by reaching out to area school children—it brings in 6,000 to 10,000 students in the fall for plays, mostly for Shakespeare. “Not every student gets hooked on APT and carries on, but many do,” Young says. “Many people I talk to say they came in high school and now I’m here with my kids.”

Baker was one of those who got started early. As a kid growing up in the country, he had gotten involved in theater through the 4-H Club. He went to Madison for a drama workshop taught by Randall Duk Kim, and then saw “The Comedy of Errors” at APT in 1981. Baker has been coming ever since. He and his wife Donna moved to Spring Green during the pandemic, making it easier to go to shows.

Now Baker works with Madison public schools to bring students to the theater. Many kids have not only never been to the theater before, but have never been in the woods. “While many of us think nothing of that—it’s a very different experience for other audiences,” says Baker. A community-engagement program called “Check Out APT” allows card holders with several Dane County public libraries to check out tickets for free.

Young says APT also is working on marketing toward younger audiences. It helps that with the addition of a more diverse set of playwrights, the shows now reflect a wider variety of experiences.

Is she concerned about possible future cuts to federal arts programs? Young says the theater doesn’t receive a lot of federal funding, even pass-through funding. “What we do worry about is will there be a trickle-down effect,” she says. “Will donors to APT still be able to support APT if there are other human-services needs to be funded?”

While funding is “definitely” a concern, Young says that APT will continue to rely on its strong donor and audience base. And help pops up in unexpected places—the Green Bay Packers Foundation gave $3,000 to the library ticket program, showing that like rain and mosquitoes, football is not incompatible with iambic pentameter.

“It’s all a little cloudy right now,” Young says of future funding. But she adds, “We’re not going to stop doing our work.”