Why Wisconsin's American Players Theatre Is Worth the Trip From Cincinnati

Rick Pender, CityBeat

For the past several summers, I have traveled to an array of summertime theaters and reported back to CityBeat readers about what I’ve seen, encouraging them to travel elsewhere for some worthy entertainment. I’ve visited the Stratford and Shaw festivals in Canada and the Contemporary American Theatre Festival in West Virginia. This summer, I headed to Spring Green, Wisconsin, to take in five of the shows produced by American Players Theatre (APT) for its 2025 season, which opened in April and continues through early November. APT is nearly 500 miles from Cincinnati, making for a drive of close to eight hours. That’s a long trek, but it’s completely worth it.

APT has been around since 1980, when it was created on 110 acres of wooded farmland in rural Wisconsin with the intention of staging plays by Shakespeare in an open-air amphitheater. The first performance there was A Midsummer Night’s Dream. By the mid-1980s, it added other classic playwrights to its repertoire, and more recently, it has occasionally staged a world premiere. Each season offers nine productions in rotating repertory using the Hill Theatre, which seats 1,088, and the newer indoor Touchstone Theatre, a freestanding black-box with seating for 200. Both venues are reached by gravel paths that wind through the woods, and both are surrounded by a lush forest. The Hill Theatre is extremely flexible, often incorporating some of the surrounding vegetation when a play’s story needs a natural setting.

A typical APT season plays to more than 110,000 people, who come from across the upper Midwest. An acting company of 40 professionals work throughout the season; many of them play multiple roles. The performers do not use body microphones; they are coached to project their voices, which are modestly amplified by area mics. Their voices often mingle with bird songs and nighttime insect sounds.

Read Full Review Here