The Cap Times is an independent newsroom serving Madison and Wisconsin. Sign up for the Food & Culture newsletter<\/a> for exclusive weekly insight.<\/em><\/p>\n American Players Theatre in Spring Green has won a Tony Award. It is the first Wisconsin theater to do so in the award\u2019s history.<\/p>\n The American Theatre Wing\u2019s Tony Awards, held every June, honor excellence in live theater performance, design, production and more. The Special Tony Award for Regional Theatre is voted on by the American Theatre Critics\/Journalists Association. (Editor’s note: Christians is a voting member of the association.)<\/em><\/p>\n The award comes with a $25,000 monetary grant and has been regularly awarded to one theater company each year since 1976.<\/p>\n Until 2013, the Regional Tony went exclusively to theaters outside of New York City. The Muny in St. Louis won in 2025; Wilma Theater in Philadelphia won in 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are so grateful,\u201d Brenda DeVita, APT\u2019s artistic director, said on Tuesday morning. \u201cIt\u2019s humbling and beautiful. So many people who work here could have their own Tony, and they stayed here and helped tell theater stories to people in rural Wisconsin.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n APT, now under the artistic leadership of Brenda DeVita, stages most plays (including this production of “Much Ado About Nothing”) in the Hill Theatre in Spring Green.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThey deserve great stories. They deserve a Tony for believing in this place all this time.\u201d<\/p>\n DeVita and managing director Sara Young credited the early belief of founders Randall Duk Kim and Anne Occhiogrosso, who planted a classical repertory theater company in rural Spring Green more than 40 years ago.<\/p>\n \u201cI go back to those that first decade of the theater, when it was so unlikely,\u201d Young said. \u201cIt feels so impossible. The deck was stacked against APT, and the fact that (the audience) stuck with us and were just so loyal \u2026 the grassroots effort to reopen (in 1986) was extraordinary, and they\u2019ve been there for us ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n DeVita said she informed APT\u2019s current cast and crew to joyful response.<\/p>\n \u201cThey screamed and jumped around and felt proud of themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n Representatives from APT will travel to New York for the awards ceremony at Radio City Music Hall on June 7. Notably, American Players Theatre alum and University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate Carrie Coon (\u201cBug\u201d on Broadway) is up for lead actress in a play, her second Tony nomination. (Her first was for \u201cWho\u2019s Afraid of Virginia Woolf<\/a>?\u201d in 2013.)<\/p>\n American Players Theatre produces eight plays in its main season and one show in its fall \u201cshoulder\u201d season each year. This season opens in previews on June 6 with Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cAs You Like It.\u201d<\/p>\n The company has been receiving more national press in recent years, with features in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal (the late theater critic Terry Teachout was an avowed fan).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Laura Rook and Phoebe Gonz\u00e1lez in “Fallen Angels” at American Players Theatre.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n
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