Our Town Meets Tennessee Williams

A sleepy Midwestern town hums with simmering tensions, when the arrival of a provocative stranger sets it all ablaze. Among the people who dwell in Independence, two sisters are living lives that have been laid out for them like a shimmering party dress. But what if that dress doesn’t fit? Maybe they, and all of these small-town women, have dreams beyond what to wear to the Labor Day dance. It seems they’re all reaching for something just beyond their fingertips. For understanding. For escape. For something to heat their hearts – elusive treasures that can only come at a cost. A sexy, poignant and deeply human drama. Get yourself a front-row seat on the blanket. Runs June 20 - September 13.

Featuring: Tracy Michelle Arnold, Dee Dee Batteast, Sun Mee Chomet, Rasell Holt & Colleen Madden

Synopsis

It’s almost time for the annual Labor Day picnic in Independence, Kansas. But the town buzz is all about Hal – the young handyman hired by sweet Helen Potts. Her neighbor, Flo, is less than enthusiastic about having Hal in the vicinity of her daughters, Madge and Millie. When it turns out Madge’s steady guy, the steadfast Alan, is an old friend of Hal’s, Flo relents, and plans are made for Hal to stick around town more permanently. But young love may have other ideas, and hearts will be filled and broken in this play about desire, expectations and the sacrifices and settlements people make when it comes to love.

Herbal cigarettes & theatrical fog will be used on stage during the performance. Contains adult themes & language. Contact the Box Office at 608-588-2361 for more information.

Season Select: Picnic
By Erin Milleville

Portable Prologues: Picnic (Apple Podcasts)

Portable Prologues: Picnic (Spotify)

American Players Theatre's 'Picnic' paints a mid-century picture of quiet desperation
Janet Clear, Isthmus

In sultry 'Picnic' at APT, sparks fly on a summer night
Lindsay Christians, The Cap Times

Picnic at American Players Theatre
Video by Hannah Jo Anderson

William Inge, from Kansas, always felt to me like he was someone who lived in the town I grew up in in Iowa. It even felt as if we grew up at the same time, though he was born 50 years before me. I always wondered why. Maybe it’s because there are very few American playwrights who write about the Midwest - the small town, the “small people.” Maybe it’s because his sympathies with the mundane never made me feel embarrassed by my humble Midwestern beginnings. Regardless, he clearly understood the gifts that came along with this kind of life. But he never sugar-coated that life either—the abiding boredom of such places. The Midwest. The Flyover States. Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, they were decidedly NOT Illinois, or even Minnesota or Wisconsin. Just ask anybody from Illinois.

Maybe the bond I feel is that I believe he understood intrinsically the utter exhilaration of a root beer float on the way home from the pool; running wild after dark in the yard with your friends playing red light, green light until the grass is wet under your feet and you know it is well past bedtime, or meeting your boyfriend in the bean field to be alone for the few minutes you wouldn’t be missed by mom. Inge understood that a lifetime of these moments...well, they make up a life. And the hope is that just maybe, those moments will happen again.

Picnic hovers in a haze of waiting, a time full of anticipation...of a sustained longing. Of bread dough rising overnight, of three-inch catalogues with a four month wait for Christmas, of hoping to wear your Easter shoes early. A feeling that can keep you alive. Or slowly dismantle you.

Inge grew up in a boarding house run by his mother and was in the company of three women, much like the ladies in Picnic. “I saw their attempts (at happiness), and, even as a child, I sensed every woman’s failure. I began to sense their sorrow and the emptiness of their lives, and it touched me.” Quiet daily life can have a loud desperation. Loud worry. Loud silent dreams.

The beautiful women of Picnic, in an attempt to resist this desperation, craft their own community. In their backyards they curate a world of family order, simplicity and self-assured practicality. Abiding by the rules of living pragmatically they remain earthbound. Dreams are kept in check. Dreams are for the children. And understanding deep down that hope rests with them.

-Brenda DeVita, Director of Picnic