Post Script

2023 has been a year of great change and transition, as theaters around the country adjusted to a “new normal.” Again. Broadway is back (along with so-so movie-to-stage adaptations and jukebox musicals) but many regional theaters are not, either closing their doors, taking a year-long pause on programming, or shrinking their seasons to something more financially feasible. Subscribers are also back, but not in pre-pandemic strength. And artistic directors are playing a nation-wide game of musical chairs as the old guard throws up their hands and a new generation tries to make money, make changes, or simply make the best of it. 

As we struggle to articulate the fundamental differences between live performance and AI, there has been much hand-wringing in the industry about what to do next, but no real answers. The only truism of the moment is that many fewer people are showing up for shows and as a result, many fewer artists are being employed in professional theater. Cast sizes are shrinking, staffs are being slashed, many new play development programs have been pushed to the back burner and, with the retirement of The Washington Post’s theater critic Peter Marks this month, professional criticism is almost extinct. 

I was personally so distressed by the situation that I abruptly moved my family to the Pacific Northwest in August. 

As an avid theatergoer and reviewer I have attended quite a few performances that were suddenly halted in the middle. 

“Hold please—“

The first time Brian Cowing worked with Children’s Theater of Madison, he was only 7 years old. As a Middleton first grader, he auditioned for a role in The Wizard of Oz, and was cast as a munchkin and one of the wicked witch’s flying monkeys. “My first time onstage, I actually got to fly in the Oscar Mayer Theater,” he says. “It was a huge show and an amazing introduction to performing.”

Almost 20 years later, Cowing is assuming the role of interim artistic director of the youth theater company, as CTM conducts a national search for a permanent replacement for the organization’s outgoing leader, Roseann Sheridan. 

“It’s been quite a journey,” Cowing says with a laugh, over a cup of coffee on a recent weekday morning. 

William Shakespeare’s classic tale of romance and tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, has fascinated audiences for more than four centuries. It has also inspired artists to translate the story into new media, from paintings, novels and poetry to films, ballets, operas, musicals, symphonies and even manga. This summer at American Players Theatre, the iconic play about young lovers from two feuding families, is presented in two languages — spoken English and American Sign. Directed with extraordinary vision by John Langs and featuring noted Deaf actor Joshua Castille as Romeo, it is an exquisitely beautiful production that awakens the well known text, making it feel fresh, vital and deeply poignant.

Similar to Deaf West’s Broadway production of the musical Spring Awakening, adding Deaf characters into the mostly hearing world of the play deepens the divide between the two groups, highlighting gaps in communication and amplifying the tragedy. There are already so many moments in Romeo and Juliet where messages are misplaced and characters refuse to hear arguments from others; making the language barriers visual reinforces that theme. 

The iconic PBS program Sesame Street got a lot of us Gen-Xers (and all the people who came after us) off to a good start. Thanks to the groundbreaking show and the magic of Jim Henson’s muppets, we made friends with monsters, practiced our numbers and letters in both English and Spanish, and learned fundamental concepts like sharing, dealing with emotions, and understanding people who were different from us. Even before we started preschool or kindergarten, we cared for Cookie Monster, Kermit the Frog, the Count, Big Bird and the odd couple roommates, Ernie and Bert. 

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a TV program featuring singing, dancing, puppets and animation that prepared recent college grads for adulthood, the same way Sesame Street got us ready for kindergarten? That is the premise of Avenue Q, onstage currently in the black box theater at Middleton High School, produced by Middleton Players Theatre, through August 13. 

American Players Theatre is not a company that does things in a hasty, slap-dash way. But when the COVID-19 pandemic closed all the theaters in 2020, the troupe put together an online performance of three short plays by Anton Chekhov, recorded in the actors’ homes in front of laptop cameras after only a few hours of rehearsal. The plays were broadcast on PBS so that while the public was confined to their homes, they could get a small glimpse of the theater they were missing. 

The first of many online performances we would watch that year, the form was wonky, the sound was temperamental, the props and costumes were improvised, but the plays were very funny and the performances were memorable. More than that, they were a balm in a distressing time. 

Six, the supercharged, over-the-top celebration of girl power, pop music and sixteenth century royal intrigue came strutting into Overture Center on August 1. The show winds up the venue’s 22/23 Broadway season with high energy performances and lots of bling, onstage in Overture Hall through Sunday.

Looking like a bedazzled Vegas act and sounding like a dozen different divas who’ve dominated the Billboard charts in the last decade – from Beyonce, Britney Spears, Shakira, Adele and Avril Lavigne, to Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Alicia Keys and Ariana Grande – the present incarnation of Henry VIII’s six wives announced to the near capacity crowd opening night that they had a score to settle, first with each other and then with history itself. 

When Carol “Orange” Schroeder has an idea, she pursues it — especially one that promotes the performing arts. This season, Schroeder is marking her 10th year of hosting recorded interviews with the actors, directors and designers who create productions all summer long at American Players Theatre in Spring Green. These 15-20 minute discussions, originally called “Talkbacks to Go,” debuted in 2014 and were available for purchase or as donor gifts on CD. Now dubbed Portable Prologues, they can be downloaded as podcasts from Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podbean, or from the APT website (under the “news” dropdown).

The interviews are a behind-the-scenes discussion, a marketing tool, a director’s note in audio form, and an archive of APT’s plays from both the Touchstone and the Hill theaters for the past decade.

In the aftermath of a tragic event, it’s natural to ask two questions: how and why? In the absence of any explanation or someone to hold accountable the questions persist, repeated ad nauseum by a sensational news cycle. 

In 2017, when an oblivious jogger shoved a woman into the path of an oncoming London bus, the incident was caught on surveillance video and the whole country asked how? Why? The man was never identified or apprehended so the questions linger, even now. 

This event is the inspiration for Sonya Kelly’s play, Once Upon a Bridge, which was commissioned by the Druid Theatre Company and debuted virtually during the pandemic in Galway. Now American Players Theatre has mounted the American premiere of the compelling three-hander, which runs in the indoor Touchstone Theatre through Oct. 7. Made up of direct-address monologues, the play presents an extensive backstory for the jogger, the pedestrian and the bus driver who swerved just in time to avert disaster. But instead of focusing on the actual traumatic event, this fascinating character study explores the before and after of that day. Directed by APT actor and director Laura Rook, it is a compelling story of three complex people whose lives collide for a split second and are forever altered.

In American Players Theatre’s current production of Thornton Wilder’s classic Our Town, the beginning of the play sneaks up on you. One moment APT doyenne and core company member Sarah Day is welcoming the audience to the show and asking everyone to turn off their cell phones and the next minute she’s slipped into the play’s main character, the Stage Manager. An omniscient narrator who gently leads the audience through the story, she invites us to spy on the citizens of the quaint hamlet of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, on a summer day in 1904. 

Like a wistful former mayor of a quintessentially American small town, Day’s character speaks fondly of the community. She knows each citizen intimately and is equally proud of their quirks and eccentricities and forgiving of their shortcomings. She sets the scene for each act, fills in the blanks on the stage’s traditionally bare set, ushers actors on and off the stage and even invites a few distinguished townspeople to expound on the town’s history, geography, politics and predilections. Slipping into the background during scenes that focus on the townspeople, her gray blouse blends in seamlessly with the weathered gray wood of the set. But when she needs to guide our attention to the next part of a deceptively pointed story, her clear voice cuts cleanly through the air of nostalgia and rings out over the crowd.