In the bright, Daylight-Saving evening, the crowd begins to gather on the grounds of the American Players Theatre complex, across from the big wooden building called Bravo Center.
Inside the building, costume designers, scenery makers and prop masters have been working the magic that will help skilled actors and actresses become the royalty and warriors of William Shakespeare’s boundless imagination, or the eccentrics in a modern farce.
Up the hill, a 1,500-seat amphitheater awaits with a stage that shortly will become another world, a 16th Century Elizabethan world, or the demi-monde of 20th Century farce. The American Players like to spice their Shakespearean repertory with a little light fare now and then.
Members of the audience-to-be stake out picnic tables–130 to choose from. Some buy the picnic meals for sale onsite. Others bring their own sandwiches and soda pop. A few spread linen tablecloths, light candles and savor catered gourmet dinners.
These are people who will not be trifled with, and so American Players Theatre–beginning its 23rd season this year–makes a cosmic professional leap away from that Hollywood concept of rural summer theater: young Mickey Rooney exclaiming , “Let’s put on a show!”
Months before, company manager Brenda DeVita was out combing the theater world for a special kind of thespian. She knows she will have to spread mostly bad news to all those actors who–as a group–she truly adores. “We get resumes from 5,000 people who want to audition,” DeVita says, “and we pick 150 to audition, and we call back 35, and we get down to 3.”
She looks not only for talent but a certain kind of single-minded theatrical purpose. DeVita urges them to check out American Players Theatre thoroughly and understand that they will be far from the sidewalks of New York or Chicago. Spring Green, population 1,300, is right in the middle of what a sophisticated urbanite might consider nowhere. To do anything, go anywhere, they’ll need a car. Madison, the nearest city of much size, is more than 30 miles away. DeVita wants professional actors who can stand that kind of isolation and immerse themselves in the creation of plays.
“The work is too hard and the season’s too long to be here and be miserable and make other people unhappy,” she points out.
Veteran Player Brian Robert Mani says the would-be newcomers are told, “This is not the path to Hollywood. This is not the path to Broadway. We get our hands dirty and we do the work that needs to be done.”
Managing director Sheldon Wilner easily can exhaust a listener with descriptions of the labor that goes into an American Players Theatre schedule. When we talked last summer, he was in the process of finalizing the 2002 season, which will include “The Taming of the Shrew,” “Antony and Cleopatra,” “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” and more modern plays by John Whiting and George Bernard Shaw.
“It’s a Rubik’s Cube,” he says. “We’re going to do at least 50 percent Shakespeare, so that means we’re going to do two or three a year. We don’t want to repeat them too often. The guy didn’t write that many plays. And some aren’t worth doing. And many of them are too big to do with only 28 people.
“We need to have one of the lighter Shakespeare comedies at the top of the season. The shows that open early in June get more performances. If a show goes up in June, it’s going to get 25 to 28 performances, but if it goes up in August, it’s only going to get 12. There are only seven, eight or nine comedies, so those will be on a list, and we will only run one every seven, eight or nine years. The comedy will do the bulk of the matinees, because those are the ones people bring the kids to. And that’s the one that will tour.”
After the summer season (June 8-Oct. 4), the company stages performances elsewhere in Wisconsin and neighboring states. This year, the fall schedule begins Oct. 19 and ends Nov. 1.
Wilner tries to plug in a couple of lesser-known, or somewhat experimental, non-Shakespeare works requiring smaller casts. “It gives us a little more freedom to roam artistically, because they have a more limited run.”
In winter, Wilner and his associates put together the artistic teams–designers, directors, set builders, costume makers, prop masters, composers, choreographers. “We have 15 here on staff and we’ll have 150 by May. In March we have what we call a design conference here in Spring Green. We bring in all the directors and all the designers and all the tech department heads for four days of meetings.”
All represent crucial elements, but directors and actors get special attention as the weeks of planning and rehearsal go on. “We try to have directors with fire in the belly,” Wilner says. “If they don’t, they may put on good shows, but not great ones. And for the core actors (the ones who return year after year), we have to find good roles. We put shows on partly to suit the actors. There’s a vibrancy in the arts business that’s needed.” That’s why Wilner refuses to drag out such popular summertime chestnuts as “Barefoot in the Park” or “The Fantasticks.”
Besides, everyone in the company is convinced that the American Players audience wants quality and artistic integrity. “This audience knows what’s going on,” actor Brian Robert Mani marvels. “We’ll get laughs on minute, little idiosyncratic phrases and moments. That just blows me away.”
“They know their stuff,” adds Wilner. “They’ve either seen the show before somewhere else, or they’ve read the play.”
Ah, yes, the audience. During the week, most of the audience comes from Madison or the surrounding area. Weekends bring patrons from as far away as Chicago. No matter where they come from, they dine at the picnic tables or in the Spring Green Resort restaurant across Spring Drive with an air of anticipation.
“You have to make a trek to get here, drive at least an hour,” Wilner says. “Once they’re here, people like to mellow out. They like to get the drive off themselves and hang out and sit and eat and have a glass of wine and yak it up with their friends. Then they walk up the hill to the theater. I think the audience is more receptive to the show because of that walk up the hill than they would be if they had just stepped off the subway or out of a taxi.”
The walk up the hill reveals a semi-circle of tiers that look down upon the stage, all lit up and ready for the opening scene–everything uncovered and in the middle of the woods. The audience is ready too. If rain threatens, they bring protective gear. They know that cans of bug spray are available at the little stations where they pick up Playbills. On cold nights, actors hear the muffled sound of clapping mittens. “They dress like they’re going to a Packers game,” Mani says.
Inevitably, there will be nights when rains become torrential. Then the situation becomes more like a baseball game. Like an umpire, the stage manager will declare a “hold” for up to 45 minutes. If the rain persists and the first act isn’t over, people get a refund. After the first act, they get a rain check.
But it’s hard to tell just when to stop. “If there’s a full house and a drizzle, maybe 20 people will get up and move to the back,” Wilner says. “The rest will put on their rain gear and sit there and watch the show. The audience thinks, `Well, they’re still acting.’ And the actors are thinking, `Well, they’re still listening.’ It gets to be a kind of vicious competition.”
When it rains so heavily that no one can hear the words, only then does the audience have to stop listening and the actors finally can look around for some towels.
Last year I attended an American Players Theatre performance of Jean Anouilh’s “Ring Around the Moon,” an amusing little comedy full of plot twists and mistaken identity. During the last act, rain began falling, while the onstage action got ever more frantic and hilarious.
Just as Wilner had led me to believe, the audience kept listening and the actors kept acting and a good time was had by all.
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E-mail Robert Cross: bcross@tribune.com
