American Players Theatre goes digital with film ‘Talk to Me: Love in the Time of COVID’

By Aaron R. Conklin, Madison Magazine

You won’t be able to see any of your favorite American Players Theatre actors on stage in Spring Green for the foreseeable future. Last week the company announced it was delaying the June 1 start of its 2020 season.

But here’s the good news: You can see a bunch of them right now in a free online film project that’s just about perfect for our current Zoom and web-conferencing reality.

Tracy Michelle Arnold, Marcus Truschinski, James Ridge, Colleen Madden, Kelsey Brennan, Melisa Pereyra, Jeb Burris and Gavin Lawrence are among the cast members of “Talk to Me: Love in the Time of COVID,” a project conceived by local filmmaker-producers Curt Hanke and Jack Whaley. The 15-minute film, watchable at talktomefilm.com, features Arnold as a counselor offering videotherapy to a host of dysfunctional patients.

And the entire project was filmed remotely using Zoom.

“Jack and I had been playing around with ideas — how do you adapt to a normal where you never leave your house?” Hanke says. “Therapy becomes a proxy for human interaction.”

Read the full article here.