American Players Theatre announces 2025 season

Aaron R. Conklin, Madison Magazine

The American Players Theatre (APT) announced the lineup for its 2025 season on Oct. 24. The nine plays that comprise APT's 46th season in Spring Green range from a classic Shakespearean show to a parody of Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 spy thriller "The 39 Steps."

In mid-June 2025, things kick off where they so often have for the theater company: With a production of William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” This classic tale of fairy kingdoms and star-crossed couples is one of APT’s most-produced shows. The company last staged it in 2017, inaugurating its newly renovated stage space with a luminous and colorful production that featured Cristina Panfilio as Puck and APT Core Company members Gavin Lawrence and Colleen Madden as Oberon and Titania. The 2025 version will be directed by another Core Company member — David Daniel.

In the company’s typical "comedy of manners" (a genre of comedy that satirizes social conventions) slot, APT is staging witty British playwright Noël Coward’s “Fallen Angels,” a lark about a pair of wives whose premarital sex shenanigans catch up with them, much to the chagrin of their husbands. Shannan Cochran makes her directorial debut. APT last staged a Coward play in 2015 (“Private Lives”).

The final outdoor show of the company’s first wave of shows is “Picnic,” a play that won the 1953 Pulitzer Prize for its author, William Inge. APT’s artistic director Brenda DeVita will direct the show, which deals with a family whose daughters’ lives and engagements are upended by the arrival of an attractive drifter.

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