Virtual Theater: APT Abandons the Stage, Embraces the Internet

By Michael Muckian, May 20, 2020, Shepherd Express

In a blow to summer theater goers, American Players Theatre on May 15 announced that it was cancelling the Spring Green troupe’s entire 2020 season due to concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic. This is the first such season cancellation in APT’s 40 years of performances.

“This was the hardest decision of our lives,” says APT artistic director Brenda DeVita. “It’s nearly impossible to express how devastated we feel as we contemplate a summer without nights in our theater in the woods.”

DeVita’s dark-cloud announcement comes with a silver lining of sorts, a lifeline for theater fans not only throughout Wisconsin but, in fact, anywhere in reach of the internet. Out of the Woods, a series of weekly play readings performed and recorded live by APT core company members, will air on Wisconsin Public Television’s website on six consecutive Fridays. The productions, available free but only for a limited time, will utilize Zoom meeting technology so that the actors can continue to shelter at home.

The series commences June 5 with Chekov One Acts, which includes three plays by the Russian playwright: The Bear, On the Harmfulness of Tobacco and The Proposal. This will be followed by Shakespeare’s As You Like It (June 12), George Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man (June 19), Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (June 26), Carlyle Brown’s Are You Now or Have You Ever Been… (July 3), and An Improbable Fiction, the world premiere of a new play by core company member James DeVita.

Zooming In

Although company members have been rehearsing with Zoom since March, the upcoming series is not their first performance outing with the technology thanks to an earlier production by Madison filmmakers Curt Hanke and Jack Whaley. Talk to Me: Love in the Time of COVID chronicles the lives of couples and singles stuck sheltering at home and coping with their relationships, or lack thereof.

The 15-minute short—conceived, written, cast, directed and edited in 27 days—was the pair’s first finished film project. Whaley, a Spring Green native, tapped friends among APT’s actors to appear in the production, released as a fundraiser for APT and the Curtain Up Fund, established to protect actors and stage managers during the COVID crisis.

The short’s Zoom format and the fact that the individual performers were filmed at their own homes created constraints that became part of the creative process, says Whaley, who directed the project.

“Limitations can be a catalyst for creative ideas,” the director explains. “In this case, our limitations actually worked as an ‘unlock’, and we used the constraint of Zoom to our advantage to create a sense of immediacy and urgency.”

During the first two weeks that the film was posted to the Internet, it received 12,000 unique views, and many notes of appreciation, especially from among the APT community, says Hanke, the film’s screenwriter and producer...

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