APT Remembers David Frank

APT’s beloved former Producing Artistic Director David Frank passed away in the early hours of July 21. David was a brilliant and wonderful human whose influence on APT was immeasurable. Language was one of his great loves, and that love manifested every day in his work and in his life. David was named Artistic Director in 1991 and quickly became a driving force for APT’s mission. He was then named Producing Artistic Director in 2005. During David’s tenure, APT created the core acting company and built the Touchstone Theatre, setting the theater on an upward trajectory in both national recognition and financial stability. Under his leadership, APT saw audience numbers surge to 100,000 and beyond, and maintained an operating surplus for 23 straight years, even through a financial crisis that caused many other theaters to shutter.

David set APT up for success, but the plays were his heart. He spent 11 years as Artistic Director of Studio Arena Theatre in New York, and eight as Producing Director at St. Louis Repertory Theater before making his home in Spring Green. David made his directorial debut at APT in 1992 with A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Some of David’s other memorable productions at APT include Antigone (Sophocles, 1997), Ring Round the Moon (Jean Anouilh; Christopher Hampton, 2001), Much Ado About Nothing (2014), and Alcestis (Euripides; Ted Hughes, 2014). David’s production of Sophocles’ The Cure at Troy, adapted by Seamus Heaney, was named Best Production of the Year by The Wall Street Journal in 2011, and Arts Critic Terry Teachout went on to call it “…the best show of any kind that I saw in 2011.”

Artistic Director Brenda DeVita, who worked with David as Associate Artistic Director for years before succeeding him, said about David:

“He was a brilliant, kind, meticulous and integrous human. He was passionate and resolute in his belief in the power of poetry, in fairness, paying himself last and being suspicious of simple answers.

He taught me that certainty was death and vanity dangerous.

Rest in peace, David.

And please God, let there be poetry wherever he is.”

David is survived by his wife, Barbara, daughters Gwen and Tora, and five grandchildren. David was a past chairman of the theater panels of The National Endowment for the Arts and the New York State Council of the Arts, and a Fellow of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.