Hannah Jo Anderson
American Player Theatre's indoors Touchstone Theatre
Capacity continues to be limited at the indoor Touchstone Theatre at American Players Theatre.
Last Friday evening, my wife and I did something that we have not done since prior to the pandemic. We went to see a live theater performance. While we have both enjoyed seeing live theater for many years, it was its absence for nearly a year and a half that made Friday’s experience so special.
We drove nearly an hour and a half from our home on Goose Lake, near Oxford, in Adams County, to American Players Theatre in Spring Green. Until just a few years ago, it was exclusively an outdoor theater. But in 2009, they opened the beautiful indoor Touchstone Theatre for small, intimate plays. These plays tend to be more intense and modern than the outdoor plays, which my wife and I thoroughly enjoy. Until the pandemic shut all live theater down, we had seen plays at APT every year since 1985, when we moved to Madison.
Since it is so beautiful there, we usually enjoy a picnic before the show, and we did so this time as well. However, there was a huge difference from pre-COVID APT, because although live theater was permitted, in order to keep everyone safe they were only selling 25 percent of their seats. So, instead of a crowded parking lot and picnic area, it was virtually empty.
If this had been before the pandemic, I would have been sad to see so few cars and people picnicking. Instead, I found myself unusually happy. In fact, I told my wife that I do not think I had ever been so happy to see a play in my life. After nearly a year and a half without enjoying live entertainment, we were about to enjoy live world-class theater.
After we enjoyed our picnic, we walked up the hill to the theater, and once inside, we realized how lucky we were to get tickets, as the theater normally only holds about 200 people; that night there were only about 40 people in the audience. In addition, out of an abundance of caution, the concession area and gift shop were closed.
Of course, while the atmosphere is important to live theater, the most important thing is the play itself and how well it is performed. Fortunately, the performance of The Mountaintop was phenomenal. It tells a fictionalized story of Martin Luther King Jr.’s last night of his life in the Lorraine Motel, accompanied by a hotel maid. Suffice it to say, the play by Katori Hall, direction by Ron OJ Parson, and acting by Gavin Lawrence and Sola Thompson were all superlative. I also appreciated that APT, which started off as a theater performing Shakespeare and other classics, is now performing plays with civil rights themes featuring Black actors.
At the end of the play, everyone rose to give the actors a standing ovation. Since there were so few of us in attendance, everyone seemed to try to clap and cheer louder to make up for the mostly empty theater. The performers truly seemed to appreciate being able to perform live for the first time in well over a year, and they appeared to acknowledge the audience’s great appreciation.
Afterwards, we returned to our home on Goose Lake, where we moved at the beginning of the pandemic, and while it was generally a very nice drive through the rolling hills and farmland of Wisconsin, it was dismaying to see crowds of unmasked young people in the Wisconsin Dells. While it would be wonderful if they were all vaccinated, my suspicion is that many of them were not.
Going back to the theater was a sign that we are returning to normalcy. However, seeing the unmasked crowds in the Dells made my wife and I fear that our nation may never fully emerge from the pandemic. We are heartened that on June 25, APT will expand its capacity to 50 percent and we look forward to going to more plays there this summer. Yet, if people continue to refuse to get vaccinated and fail to wear masks, the pandemic will continue and our ability to return to normal will be delayed. Of course, that also means more people will get sick and die from COVID.
There are, however, other options. In other states, they are taking sensible actions to boost vaccination rates. Republican Govs. Mike DeWine in Ohio and Larry Hogan in Maryland have created lotteries to incentivize people to get vaccinated. I wholeheartedly support such an approach. I also support vaccine passports. After all, it is smart business — business owners and employees can feel confident they are safe if they and all customers are vaccinated. Moreover, if everyone is vaccinated in a place of business or a theater, then nobody would need to wear masks.
Unfortunately, these ideas, at least so far, appear to be dead in the water in Wisconsin. For reasons that make absolutely no sense from a health and business perspective, neither Gov. Tony Evers nor Republican legislators support vaccine passports. Moreover, there has yet to be a proposal from any Wisconsin political leader to adopt the Ohio and Maryland strategies implementing vaccine lotteries to encourage vaccination.
The opposition to vaccine lotteries and passports lacks sound health and business rationale. Rather, such opposition seems to be driven by the same anti-science opposition to vaccines and masks that has hampered our ability to combat COVID-19 during the entire pandemic. At this rate, with such inane opposition to reasonable medical and business practices, we will never reach herd immunity, and we will never return to normal while people continue to get sick and die from COVID-19.
As individuals, businesses and governments, we can do better. We must do better.
[Editor's note: This column was corrected to note that APT will move to 50 percent capacity on June 25; this is in accordance with actor’s union rules, which state that the theater must remain at 25 percent capacity throughout the run of the first two plays.]
Jeff Spitzer-Resnick is a Madison-based civil rights attorney. A version of this post first appeared in the author’s blog, Systems Change for a Better World.