Feature: 4 American Players Theatre artists on how APT is redefining 'classic'

By Lindsay Christians, The Cap Times

American Players Theatre is a literary place. Where some theater companies emphasize dance, experimental design or new voices, this classical repertory company in Spring Green has been driven by poetry and prose for 45 years.

Much of the eight-play 2022 mainstage season goes back to the kinds of stories for which APT is best known. A Jane Austen adaptation, “Sense and Sensibility,” opened last weekend. Jim DeVita directs a fresh production of “Hamlet,” opening in early July. A less familiar Shakespeare play, “Love’s Labour's Lost,” opens in August.

Running now in the Hill Theatre, a late-1700s comedy of manners, “The Rivals,” stars Tracy Michelle Arnold as Mrs. Malaprop in a melodrama that makes good on its promise to be a “frothy confection.” Jen Silverman’s dark comedy “The Moors” opens later in the summer, described by director Keira Fromm as “a deranged family drama” that encourages women to break out of society’s roles.

The main evolution is that “classic” at this repertory company no longer (only) means Shakespeare, Ibsen, Chekhov and Shaw. Brenda DeVita, APT’s artistic director, has been talking about that shift for the past several years.

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