The Road Back: An Earlier Autumn

Managing Director Sara Young on 2025's updated fall start times.

Welcome to another season of The Road Back, a chance to update you on what happens at APT off-season and what you need to know for the upcoming season in the woods.

If you've seen the season schedule, you'll notice a fairly major change. After Labor Day, many showtimes will shift a bit earlier.

We’ve gotten some feedback over the last few years that you’d like earlier start times for evening performances. And we get it. About half of our visitors come from the Madison metro area; most of them are not staying in the area overnight, so it’s roughly an hour drive home afterwards. You can count on APT plays, especially those in the Hill Theatre, being on the long side so it’s not unusual to arrive back home at midnight or after.

You have told us time and again that our location in the Spring Green woods is a big part of what makes APT special. We wouldn't trade it for anything, and we hope you wouldn't either. It's worth the trip. And at the same time, it's valid to want that trip to end a bit earlier.

Yet we don’t want to slight another beautiful aspect of APT – watching the play beneath the moon and stars. With the abundance of summer light, true darkness doesn’t fall until after 9 PM. Moving show times earlier would mean that only a small portion of the play would be after dark.

We had many conversations about how to balance these two competing factors and ultimately hit on a compromise which takes advantage of the shorter autumn days later in the season.

Starting in September, most evening performances move to 7:00 PM. The Sunday evening performance will remain at 6:00 PM throughout the season. In addition, afternoon matinees in September are all at 1:00 PM, which gives the crew a bit more time to change the scenery between performances. Weekday morning matinees remain a mix of 10:00 and 10:30 AM start times. The adjusted schedule applies to performances in both theaters.

Changes like this can be tricky, especially for those who have been coming for decades and have their APT itinerary down to a science. We will be reminding you repeatedly through the season in every way we can think of so you don't miss a minute of your play.

We're excited to give this a try. We hope you'll let us know how it goes for you. And thanks for always being game to try something new.