A Shakespearean Love Affair

APT founders return for a homecoming show

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On a chilly fall afternoon in 1986, my mom and I climbed the hill at American Players Theatre for my first experience with live Shakespeare  — The Merchant of Venice — with Randall Duk Kim in the title role. I was 16 years old, and completely spellbound. It was a life-changing experience: That was the moment I decided to major in theater in college, to pursue my passion professionally.

Kim has since landed Hollywood roles in The Matrix Reloaded and Kung Fu Panda, but he is best known here for his masterful performances of Shakespeare classics, and for founding an esteemed outdoor theater in the unlikely, pastoral setting of Spring Green. In 1979, Kim, Anne Occhiogrosso and Charles Bright established American Players Theatre, which has since grown to become one of the country’s premier classical companies

Although they have long departed APT and Wisconsin, Kim and Occhiogrosso were at the top of the invite list for this fall’s Shakespearean celebrations, says Norma Saldivar, a theater professor who recently served as interim director of UW-Madison’s Arts Institute.

“As I started to explore the history of Shakespeare in Wisconsin, it was impossible not to acknowledge the impact they had on the state,” says Saldivar. “The APT founders have inspired generations of theater artists and audiences to bring these stories — with their characters and beautifully complex language — to life.”

After several phone conversations, Saldivar convinced the couple to return here for a performance of their original work: The Pleasure of His Company: Our Love Affair with William Shakespeare and the First Folio.

The one-night only event on Oct. 21 at Wisconsin Union Theater allows the APT founders to present personal recollections, signature classical dramatic scenes and stories of Shakespeare’s influence on their lives and careers over the decades. The show is also a tribute to the First Folio, Shakespeare’s original manuscripts, which they emphatically cite as the most authentic and reliable version of Shakespeare’s texts.

As the show reflects, Shakespeare has served as the daily mission and inspiration of the couple throughout their lives: “It’s always the work. I start doing research on a play every morning,” says Occhiogrosso. “That’s our life, our stimulation, our joy. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. We get to spend every day of our lives with a master playwright who understands the human condition better than anyone.”

Kim and Occhiogrosso’s visit will draw attention to the Madison stop of “The First Folio! The Book that Gave Us Shakespeare,” which opens at the Chazen Museum Nov. 3, as part of a worldwide year-long celebration commemorating the 400th anniversary of the playwright’s death. The exhibition will bring the rare texts to museums, universities and public libraries in all 50 states and Puerto Rico. At the Chazen, the hallowed book will be open to the pages that contain Hamlet’s famous “To be, or not to be” speech.

For longtime APT theater-goers, the names Kim and Occhiogrosso are synonymous with respect and reverence for Shakespearean plays in the First Folio. When the couple began the Spring Green-based company, they were committed to creating productions that were uncut and true to the original text.

Saldivar says Kim and Occhiogrosso planted the seeds where the garden would flourish: “We now have companies in all four corners of the state producing Shakespeare, filling the summers with sounds of his plays. How impressive is that for a legacy?”

Lessons from the Bard

For Kim and Occhiogrosso, the First Folio has been an essential guidepost: “There’s a tendency to look at it as a dusty old book that has to stay under glass,” says Occhiogrosso. “We want to communicate that it is a working document. It is still very much alive for us.” The couple is particularly excited about talking to audiences and UW-Madison students about the essential lessons for actors and directors found in the First Folio. “It has really been a map for us. It’s been the tool, the fire under our work,” Kim says.

The First Folio, published in 1623, was the initial collected edition of Shakespeare’s plays, meticulously compiled by two of Shakespeare’s fellow actors, John Heminges and Henry Condall. Of the 36 plays it contains, half had not been previously published, including Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Antony and Cleopatra, The Comedy of Errors and As You Like It. Researchers believe that 750 or fewer copies of the First Folio were printed; 235 survive today, of which 82 are in the Folger Shakespeare Library’s collection in Washington D.C., which is loaning copies for the traveling exhibit.

“Seven years after Shakespeare’s  death, Heminges and Condall took extreme pains in order to collect the plays and put them in one volume. In some cases they had to buy back the royalties. And they were vigilant about how it was printed. Despite a few printer edits, the text itself is really cared for,” said Kim.

Over time, Shakespeare’s texts have evolved to include edits, additions and corrections by scholars, mostly made to make the plays easier for readers to understand. Stage directions were added. Irregular lines were changed so they fit into iambic pentameter. Punctuation was altered so lines flowed more like sentences, and words that seemed randomly capitalized were corrected to lower case. And while subsequent editions were superior grammatically, Kim feels a great deal of the author’s intent has been lost, making it harder for actors and directors to understand how the plays should be performed.

“We look at the First Folio as a musical score,” Kim says. “The punctuation, how it’s laid out on the page tells us when to take pauses, which words to hit. A colon means the actors should move on stage. A period is a place to check in with another performer.”

“We’ve both spent years studying it,”Occhiogrosso adds. “It gets us to ask questions like, what’s going on in this scene? What’s happening to these characters? It continues to be an exciting area of investigation, even all these years later.”

Shared love

Occhiogrosso met Randall Duk Kim in the late ’60s when she was a senior at Hunter College in New York City.  “He was brought in as a guest artist, and we performed in a production together,” she recalls. “Then he came back the next year to teach a class. We found we shared a love for Shakespeare and other classical playwrights.”

Kim had studied theater at the University of Hawaii, where he met the late Charles Bright. The pair started a theater company called the Ensemble of Theatrical Artists. Bright and Kim were later hired to be part of the touring production of Hair.

“Randy introduced me to Chuck and the rest is history,” says Occhiogrosso, adding that the three of them worked together as a team until Bright’s death in 2011.

By the mid-1970s Kim was gaining a national reputation as a classical actor. Occhiogrosso was directing productions and leading acting workshops in New York and San Francisco. Charles Bright worked for the Kennedy Center as the director of sales and promotion.

Ultimately, it was the trio’s devotion to the fidelity of Shakespeare’s words that led them to found American Players Theatre, after nearly 10 years of planning. “Randy was working in regional theater and doing versions of a lot of classic plays that had been drastically cut or updated,” says Occhiogrosso. “We would talk about scenes he was having trouble with in rehearsal, and realized that the reason the actors couldn’t make the necessary connections was due to all the things that had been left out.”

In 1978 Kim was rehearsing the title role of Hamlet at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis and “he was really frustrated because the script was cut to pieces,” says Occhiogrosso.

This experience reinforced their belief that to tell the stories Shakespeare wrote, they needed to work with the plays in their entirety, in their original form.

His time at the Guthrie also convinced Kim that Midwestern audiences were careful listeners. The trio began seriously looking for a site to establish a new company in Minnesota, Wisconsin or Illinois. They looked at 49 different properties before finding their home in Sauk County.

“It just so happened,” says Occhiogrosso, “that the woman who owned a property we were looking at in Spring Green was very involved in community theater. As we toured the farmland she mentioned that she had always wanted to see a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on her hill.”

With $4,000 to their names, Bright, Kim and Occhiogrosso founded what would become one of the premier outdoor classical theaters in the country. “We believed in what we were going to do,” she said. “We had a press conference with coffee cake and chocolate covered strawberries and told the world.”

The Vision for APT

It was an ambitious mission. “What we wanted to do was create a sanctuary for the plays, for a company of actors dedicated to studying, training, and performing great playwrights like Moliere, Chekhov, Ibsen, and, of course, Shakespeare,” says Kim. “It’s so rare to have stories that transcend time or place. The great playwrights and the great plays are almost sacred – they should be treated with fear and trembling.” He pauses. “Sophocles, Lear, that’s what I wanted to see. Like a ballet company where the performers are so dedicated to it, they will break their bodies to achieve greatness.”

“And for the audience, we imagined a place where people could come to recreate – to leave the city to take care of their souls,” adds Kim. “With no compromises, only respect for the texts. We wanted to say to an audience, ‘you’re going to see the play uncut, the world of play in its entirety – and you’ll get it.’ And they did.”

APT’s inaugural season in 1980 included just two plays: Titus Andronicus and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Kim was the theater’s artistic director and lead actor; he played Puck in Midsummer. Occhiogrosso took on the duties of resident director, and Bright worked as the managing director, overseeing administrative work behind the scenes. The company initially hired two dozen actors, both Equity and non-union, who worked long days rehearsing and attending classes.

In The Book of Lore, a hardbound collection of stories from artists, staff and patrons about APT’s first 25 years, actor Geddeth Smith writes about the early days.“When we arrived for rehearsal, the theater itself was little more than a hole in the ground. I remember walking up the hill every day, watching it gradually take shape. I remember rehearsing in the granary in downtown Spring Green, having a dress rehearsal cancelled because of enormous swarms of merciless attacking mosquitoes.”

Finally, opening night arrived on July 18, 1980.

“There was no spare money for a concession stand, so it consisted of three wooden wire spools with wooden planks serving as the counter,” recalls Rose Ellen Schneider, the house and concession manager that summer. “I had to transport coffee pots and jugs of water up the hill in my car. We were scrambling. Only a third of the seats were installed and nearly 400 people were expected. Audience members arrived and didn’t understand that APT was an outdoor theater located some distance from the parking lot. A number of ladies climbed the gravel path to the theater in high heels. It was slightly short of chaos but, finally, all were seated. Chuck Bright walked on stage to welcome the audience. He apologized for the inconvenience and asked for patience. ‘We are a baby theater, taking its first steps,’ he said. ‘We hope you enjoy our production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’”   

Later that night, the audience rose to their feet for the theater’s first standing ovation.

Word spread quickly about the quality of APT’s work. In subsequent seasons, the theater mounted a steady stream of Shakespearean comedies, histories and tragedies. And as the years progressed, more classic authors were showcased, including Chekhov, Marlowe, Sheridan, Ibsen and Sophocles.         

While APT’s artistic reputation soared over the next decade — in 1985 it was nominated for a regional Tony Award — the financial outlook for the company was often dire. By January 1986 the company had amassed a $600,000 debt and announced it would close. But there was substantial outcry from the community and theatergoers across Wisconsin and fundraising committees formed to save the theater. With a $405,000 loan from the state and thousands of individual contributions, Kim and Occhiogrosso persevered for another five years, clinging to their original mission in the face of persistent budget concerns.

Life After Spring Green

In 1991, after 12 years at APT, Kim and Occhiogrosso headed  to the East Coast. After weathering many budgetary and administrative challenges, they say they were ultimately discouraged that the theater’s board had not fully supported their original mission — to advance study of classic texts and provide rigorous actor training while producing exceptional productions of complete First Folio scripts. At that point David Frank took the reigns of the company.

The couple moved to Great Meadow, New Jersey, and Kim began working on Broadway, where he performed in The King and I, Golden Child and Flower Drum Song. He also appeared onstage with the New York Shakespeare Festival, the Public Theater, Lincoln Center, Delacorte Theater, the American Place Theatre and the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. His numerous television and movie credits include playing The Keymaker in The Matrix Reloaded, and Master Oogway in the animated franchise Kung Fu Panda.

As a director, dramaturg and actor, Occhiogrosso also found new opportunities. She began coaching acting students, taught at the Stella Adler Conservatory and New York University and worked with the New York Shakespeare Festival in Central Park.

“We were surprised when we got to New York, because our reputation preceded us,” says Occhiogrosso. “We were already known for our classical work, and everywhere we went, actors would ask us to host classes.”

“When I was in The King and I, the chorus members would want to study Shakespeare with us in their off hours, so that’s what we did,” Kim adds. “We set up classes for 10 at a time in our living room.”

As for the future, Kim has a bucket list of roles he would like to play — or play again. And he continues to share a “mutual joy in the work” in his marriage to Occhiogrosso. “Work throws down challenges that we’re happy to take up. We share that and have always shared that,” he says. In 2010, after living and working together for decades, Kim and Occhiogrosso were married.

In a 2012 interview with Broadwayworld.com, Kim said he and Occhiogrosso “never looked back” after leaving APT in 1991. All the same, Occhiogrosso says they are welcoming the opportunity to reconnect with old friends in conjunction with their performance here.

Before Bright died in 2011, the three founders attended the 2003 ceremony where Kim was inducted into the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.

Reflecting on the years they devoted to APT, Occhiogrosso is philosophical: “Perhaps the best lesson we ever learned was also expressed by the great American actor Edwin Booth when he said (and I paraphrase) ‘Every actor dreams of starting his own theater but when he wakes up he knows better.’ I guess you’d have to start one to really understand what he meant.” 

The Pleasure of His Company: Our Love Affair With William Shakespeare and the First Folio with Randall Duk Kim and Anne Occhiogrosso

Wisconsin Union Theater, Shannon Hall

Presented by the UW-Madison Arts Institute and Wisconsin Union Directorate

Oct. 21, 7 pm, free

Reservations: go.wisc.edu/shakesaffair_tix