Text is king

American Players Theatre’s new series of virtual readings has its own magic

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In this strange moment of COVID-19 and quarantines we have all lost our everyday interactions with others; well-worn routines of going to work or school, gathering with friends, going out to restaurants and of course, going to the live performing arts events like concerts and theater. As summer begins, there is also a loss of rituals — from graduations and weddings, to the Dane County Farmers’ Market, to the Fourth of July fireworks.

For many of us, early June is synonymous with another beloved ritual — bringing a picnic basket and a bottle of wine to the grounds at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, hearing the musical cue that the performance is about to begin, and carrying blankets and bug spray up the hill to see the first play of the season, performed by the consistently extraordinary APT company. We settle into our seats, surrounded by the sounds of Wisconsin wildlife. We marvel at the rustic, outdoor stage. We lean forward in our seats, waiting for our favorite actors, as well as the new class of interns, to transport us to Renaissance England or ancient Greece, Denmark or New Orleans. We revel in the stories and luxuriate in the words, as the sun goes down and the stars come out overhead. We even like the bats that regularly swoop in and out of the scenes.

Of course this year is different. But to APT’s credit, it is still enchanting. Thanks to a government grant for small businesses, the company was able to put their 2020 season on hold and create a new series of classical and contemporary readings, performed on the Zoom video conferencing platform and broadcast free of charge in collaboration with PBS Wisconsin. The partnership is smart on so many levels: APT is able to produce new, compelling content when many other theaters are struggling to find archived recordings of past shows to hurriedly put online. This is also an easy and accessible way to stay in touch with the company’s broad audience. And by working with nationally known director Aaron Posner and many of the theater’s most recognizable, uber-talented actors, the quality of the pieces is on par with all their other work to date. Partnering with a local television station that can edit the Zoom recording also avoids common pitfalls of other virtual programming — the final cut is smooth and glitch-free, there are no time lags between spoken lines, and the interaction among actors confined to small boxes on your TV screen is remarkably good.

The other reason this virtual staged reading format works so well for APT is that, as Posner comments in the talkback, “text is king” for the company. When artists allow audiences to focus on the words, they achieve a similar magic in storytelling that large casts in full costumes and makeup do on The Hill and in the Touchstone Theatre. As a bonus, in the Out of the Woods series, APT audiences can see the televised and socially distanced actors’ work up close, maybe for the first time. Delivering the dialogue directly at the camera of their laptops, we see faces full on, in minute detail, where we are used to observing them interacting on a much larger stage.

And in addition to the televised plays — the series officially debuted on pbswisconsin.org on June 12 with an evening of three one-act plays by Anton Chekhov — audiences are also treated to behind-the-scenes content. Yes, a whippoorwill sings and crickets chirp in the background as we focus on a still photo of the outdoor stage at the beginning of the presentation, to remind us of the familiar live experience. But then we hear directly from an almost giddy Brenda DeVita, APT artistic director, who introduces the company in its new medium. There is also a clever montage of actors warming up in their own homes — acknowledging the odd challenges of their new job.

And at the close of the performance there is a talkback with the actors and director, who field questions from the audience. It is a sneak peek behind the curtain that APT rarely provides, outside of performances for school field trips, that acknowledges the bizarre moment the performing arts is currently navigating, and allows the actors to voice how happy they are to be together again — even virtually — creating art as an ensemble.

The evening of Chekhov includes three “vaudeville” comedies; The Bear, On the Harmfulness of Tobacco and The Proposal. Each of them is a broad, one-joke scene, featuring characters traveling between ridiculous extremes, complete with “Boris and Natasha” Russian accents. And happily, each of them is actually quite funny, in contrast to the playwright’s longer, better known works. First produced in the late 19th century, Chekhov himself did not take the plays too seriously, writing “I’ve managed to write a stupid vaudeville which, owing to the fact that it is stupid, is enjoying surprising success.”

In The Bear, Brian Mani is a crazed creditor who is desperate to recover the money he previously loaned, so he can pay off other debts. But the man with his capital has died, and his widow, Tracy Michelle Arnold, is so busy performing her grief that she cannot procure the funds for several days. Mani is incensed, Arnold is scandalized and offended, and her aged servant, played by Jim Ridge, is generally alarmed at the unrest in the house. Halfway through the heated arguments, Mani’s character has a dramatic change of heart that turns his adversary into the woman he desires most.

Mani rages brilliantly, pounding on the walls and tearing at his hair. Likewise, Arnold fans herself frantically, chews on her necklace, and throws icy looks down her nose at the furious intruder. There is much animated talk of dimples, and Ridge impressively uses the computer’s tiny frame to portray physicality and movement that is essential to his character. Though all the actors are clothed in pieces from their own closets, the “costumes” set a nice, unifying tone and the plain, colorful backgrounds allow the focus to be on the actors alone.

In the solo piece On the Harmfulness of Tobacco, David Daniel is the hen-pecked professor on the verge of a nervous breakdown, goaded by his tyrannical wife into presenting a public talk on the dangers of a substance he himself enjoys. Rerouted by multiple asides, Daniel shares details of his miserable marriage, his unfulfilling career, and his house full of an indeterminate number of grown daughters. Toggling between laughing and crying in both public and private moments, Daniel makes the professor’s tale of woe simultaneously tragic and comic. Though seated for his address, the actor brings constant nervous movement to the role; adjusting his tiny gold rimmed glasses, shuffling papers, struggling with a nervous twitch, and eventually doing battle with his frock coat, all while avoiding the subject and dreaming of a life far away on a hill where he could, perhaps, be at peace.

On a technical level, Daniel’s lovely, expressive face isn’t always fully present in the shot, which feels like getting cheated. But as the company does more of these performances, no doubt issues like that will be resolved.

In the final piece, The Proposal, APT brings out “the big guns” with Marcus Truschinski as a nervous suitor paralyzed by his own fright, Sarah Day as no nonsense, opinionated mother (etcetera!), and Colleen Madden as the girl next door with an iron will, a smoky, bemused laugh, and a cigar that is sometimes more than a cigar. The contentious trio wages war over the smallest matters, causing Truschinski’s already overwrought body to fail, before he can pop the half-hearted question of marriage. Madden discusses the ownership of her grassy meadow like an agrarian femme fatale, but turns on the girlish charm when the subject of matrimony finally comes up. Her hair flips are epic, as is Truschinski’s frozen, pained smile in the face of his unpleasant task. Day’s pronouncement of a matrimonial bliss amidst blistering feuds feels like a triumphant and ridiculous end to the triptych.

In her exuberance, Madden occasionally overpowers her mic. This is surely an occupational hazard for a performer who is used to projecting to a 1,000+ seat audience in the open air.

In only four days of rehearsal, director Aaron Posner has distilled each piece and skillfully guided the cast to find the essence of each character and interaction. The scenes are crisp, clean, and big enough to be comic without losing the humanity and fragility of the people underneath. In spite of Chekhov’s own dismissal of the material, more than a century later the short comedies are still a surprising success.

Each performance in the APT Out of the Woods reading series will remain on the pbswisconsin.org website after its initial posting, and will be available until July 26. No need to buy tickets, just tune in — and create a new theater ritual for this unusual summer.

See Isthmus’ guide for APT’s complete schedule.