SPRING GREEN — One month ago, members of the American Players Theatre core company walked on to their newly remodeled stage for the first time.

Sarah Young, APT’s director of communications, documented the tour on a Facebook Live video. In the film, she trails production manager Michael Broh and actors wearing yellow hard hats as they tromp over a newly flattened outdoor lobby among honey locust saplings.

When they get to the theater itself, the players hover at the top of the stairs. They’re quiet, staring down what has been the company’s open air home for 37 years.

“It’s like Christmas,” murmurs Melisa Pereyra.

“It feels closer,” says Brian Mani, a veteran actor who’s been performing up the hill in Spring Green for 18 years. “Our 1,000-plus audience seems more intimate than it ever has to me.”

When American Players Theatre’s 2017 season opens in previews on June 10, audiences will ascend the hill to a more accessible outdoor stage, with technical and structural improvements designed to make things easier to see, hear and feel.

On the stage itself, change is also evident. Audiences will find a cast of actors chosen to reflect the complex, racially diverse world we live in.

Though APT resides in a largely white, rural Wisconsin village of about 1,600, the company has recently moved in the same direction as the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis and the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, seeking out artists of color and programming thought-provoking plays.

“We do it with respect, understanding how complicated it is,” artistic director Brenda DeVita said. “Our work at APT is to tell great universal stories. Great artists that respect those plays and want to tell them are the people I’m searching for.”

APT is, as one actor said, “a big ship, and big ships turn slowly.” But as it approaches its 38th season, the professional company has made deliberate changes to keep its work relevant.

“We haven’t changed the mission statement,” said DeVita, who became just the third artistic director in the company’s history when she took over from David Frank in 2014.

“The mission statement is inclusive of expanding what is universal and what is classical,” DeVita said. “We are committed to poetry and the great stories of human history. What is classical, to me, is ‘always’ and ‘now.’

“As an actor, you’re trying to honor and respect the intention of the playwright and honor and respect your personal point of view. Great plays ... offer us insight into the idea that we’re not alone and we’ve never been alone.”

Back in breeches

Founded in 1977 by Randall Duk Kim, Anne Occhiogrosso and Charles Bright, APT has focused for decades on William Shakespeare’s histories, comedies and tragedies alongside meaty classics by Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw.

In contemporary productions of Shakespeare, it’s not unusual to see women in male roles, and that has become more common up the hill. Last season, Kelsey Brennan and Cristina Panfilio played a set of twins in “The Comedy of Errors” while Greta Oglesby played the Duchess of Kent (usually an Earl) in “King Lear.”

This year, Tracy Michelle Arnold plays Peter Quince and Panfilio plays Puck in a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” directed by John Langs. The first “Midsummer” preview is set for June 10 and it runs the longest of any play up the hill, closing on Oct. 8.

“The thing we most want to do with this ‘Midsummer’ is try to make the magic that’s written into the show something that’s generated by the audience,” Langs said. “Puck becomes a conduit between the energy of the audience and changing the story.”

With Puck as a woman, Langs likes the idea that her affection for the fairy king, Oberon, might be something other than platonic.

“At the heart of the play is a story about the healing power of love, and the idea of love versus what love actually is,” Langs said. “Could we put (Puck) at the center of her own love story? Why is she working so hard for him? What is it like if Puck is falling in love with Oberon?”

In “Comedy of Errors,” Brennan and Panfilio performed as boys, what are sometimes called “breeches” roles. But Oglesby played Kent as a woman, which changed the power dynamic between Lear and the Earl in a fascinating way.

“At the time when I first reached out to them, there wasn’t a lot of diversity in their company,” said Oglesby, who is based in Minneapolis and played her first season at APT last year. “It was a wonderful experience.

“I kissed (director) Bill Brown’s feet ... I think he’s the best ever. It stretched me in ways I hadn’t been stretched before.”

In part because of APT’s classical roots, playwrights remain mostly male. Laura Gordon directs the season’s sole play written by a woman. Yasmina Reza’s “The Unexpected Man” has its first preview in the Touchstone Theatre on June 10.

Gordon, an actor as well, has been encouraged by the casting of women in male roles.

“I’m really excited about where the company’s going,” Gordon said. “It feels like they’ve been taking some big steps, when you see what APT is trying to do and the diversity of the company.

“It hasn’t been until recently as an actor where I think, ‘Oh my gosh! There’s still a world out there of Shakespeare roles that I can play!”

Diverse drama

With the opening of the smaller Touchstone in 2009, APT’s repertory has grown more experimental and contemporary, producing works by Samuel Beckett, Sarah Ruhl and Athol Fugard.

Some of these works allow the spotlight to shine on actors of color APT recruited to come to Spring Green. Plays like Fugard’s “The Island” in 2015 and “The African Company presents Richard III” in 2016 demanded nearly all-black casts.

Two years ago, Langs cast Milwaukee actor Chike Johnson as the title character in “Othello,” a part Johnson felt conflicted about.

“I still am not a big fan of the play because of the racial implications of a black man killing a white woman on stage,” Johnson said. “For somebody who was so accomplished in the military, it was a little too easy for him to be used.”

But Johnson knew APT artists, and he knew the work was high quality. When he arrived in Spring Green he found a supportive creative team, including Gigi Buffington, a voice coach who has returned this season to direct a play in the Touchstone.

“APT is throwing four or five balls in the air,” Johnson said, “but you’re not only juggling, you’re making it look really easy, like you’ve been doing this for a long time.”

Johnson returns this season to play Egeus, Hermia’s father, in “Midsummer,” Le Bret, a friend of the main character, in “Cyrano de Bergerac,” and the “love-sick major” Vershinin in “Three Sisters” opening in August.

“There’s a big hoopla about changing things in Shakespeare to make it more accessible to today’s audience, but I don’t think the audience that comes out to APT needs it,” Johnson said. “APT might set it in a different time period but the words are the same. There’s no dumbing down of the play.”

Classical theater offers excellent opportunities for both women and performers of color because few of the great stories are changed by the appearance of the actors.

“Eighty-five to 90 percent of what’s written has nothing to do with race,” said Ameenah Kaplan, a choreographer working on “Midsummer” with Langs. “We’ve been screaming that since the beginning: black actors, people of color, women.

“We’ve all been like, ‘Why does every judge have to be a white guy?’ It’s not the case in real life, so why does it have to be the case on television or on the stage?”

As choreographer, Kaplan will incorporate her own influences into the movement language of the play. Her choreography for “Midsummer” may draw from African, Afro-Cuban and Brazilian rhythms, a Louisiana funeral “second line” parade and a Middle Eastern dance called the dabkah.

“My choreography is a hodgepodge and a mixture, because I am that,” said Kaplan, who was an original cast member of “STOMP” off-Broadway. “There are so many (movement) influences in America and I have an appetite for it all.

“There’s always a bit of rhythm in everything I do, a little body percussion.”

Incorporating artists’ diverse backgrounds into classic works is also fundamental to this season’s production of Jean Genet’s “The Maids,” which opens on June 27, in previews.

“The Maids” stars Melisa Pereyra from Buenos Aires and Mexican-American actor Andrea San Miguel.

Buffington, a New York-based artist with Brazilian roots, directs.

Genet was a French playwright in the 1940s, writing about two young maids who have grown close with their wealthy madame, wrestling with their love for and intense hatred of her.

In this production, Buffington has encouraged Pereyra and San Miguel to embrace their heritage, to make it “theirs” as much as possible and draw a parallel to 21st century immigrants working in service. Buffington has encouraged them to “code switch,” moving between Spanish and English, something the women do naturally between rehearsals anyway.

“For Melisa and Andrea playing these sisters ... to get to share their stories, and for the three of us to get to share our stories, is something we’re all so looking forward to,” Buffington said.

“Imagine somebody trying to tell your story, but they have no experience with it. For people of color, particularly right now, this is vitally important.”

Pereyra played Juliet in the 2014 production of “Romeo and Juliet” and has since become APT’s first core company member who is a person of color.

“That changes the conversation in the room,” Pereyra said of her presence in the company. “It just does. There are perspectives that haven’t had a light shone on them that are obvious to me, and I speak into them more often.

“Brenda continues to be open to these conversations, as well as the entire company, to face the gaps of knowledge of conversations that haven’t been had.”

At APT, Pereyra has become a vocal advocate for works by female playwrights of color. She performed Griselda Gambaro’s wrenching “Antigona Furiosa” as part of APT’s 2016 Winter Words reading series, and she’d like to see more like that.

“Working in the classics, you win some things and you lose some things,” Pereyra said. “We don’t just exist as domestics, but that happens to be the narrative that keeps being told ... about the Latinx community.”

Even a veteran actor of color like Greta Oglesby may have never been cast in a play like Oscar Wilde’s “The Ideal Husband,” which ran up the hill last year. Oglesby is a classically trained performer, but as the gossipy Lady Markby, the Wildean dialect was a new challenge for her — and she loved it.

“I was so thrilled with the role I played in ‘Ideal Husband,’” Oglesby said. “Black women don’t get to do that much. Out of my three shows, it was my favorite show to suit up and do. I loved the words, I loved that character.

“I applaud Brenda for wanting to diversify what they offer on the menu of plays.”

What APT is doing with actors of color, Oglesby said, can be seen at companies around the country.

“Large theaters who really haven’t embraced diverse plays are beginning to do that now,” Oglesby said. “They are really wonderful rich stories, and thank God they’re finally seeing that.

“People want their stages to represent what our country looks like, what the world looks like,” she added. “It’s so smart to do that. It enriches the work you do at your theater when you open it up.”

Upgrade the Hill

Also opening this summer is APT’s physical stage, which emerges from a $7.7 million renovation project looking and feeling like a fresher version of itself.

Part of APT’s summer magic is that the performance facilities are outdoors, surrounded by trees and native prairie. Repertory sets must be impervious to the elements and able to be struck every night, as a tragedy moves out and a farce moves in. For years, storage space has been at a premium.

With eight plays running in repertory during the summer including three indoors, rehearsal space got even tighter.

About three years ago, production manager Michael Broh started working with other staff and contractors on plans to upgrade the theater’s performance and backstage spaces. The goal was to make production easier and smoother without losing the “play in the woods” elements.

In spring 2016, APT revealed plans for an ambitious renovation. Work began as soon as the outdoor season concluded last October, and to give a small buffer, the 2017 season is starting a week later than usual.

“The lobby feels more open,” Broh said. “It’s easier to walk on.”

The lobby has trees that will grow into a small canopy and more wooden overhangs, to huddle under during a sudden rainstorm.

Also in the lobby there’s a new accessible family bathroom and a widened shuttle stop with a place for people to rest before they’re driven back down the hill. Inside the theater, 60 seats at house left were removed to improve sight lines.

“Accessibility is a big one for us,” Broh said. “We’ve heard a lot of people comment on how pleased they are with the railings in the audience. In the past, it could be hard to walk down the aisle.”

Thanks to a new catwalk, the upgraded stage has more flexibility with lighting. It is now fully outfitted with traps, allowing actors and props to enter and exit through holes in the floor. Big hinged doors allow more elaborate scenery to move on and off.

In some cases those doors might stand open, to “bring more of the woods onstage,” Broh said, though one of the benefits with the new design is that actors will be able to enter and exit faster, key to a farce like Georges Feydeau’s “A Flea in Her Ear,” opening June 16.

The French comedy, directed and adapted by former artistic director David Frank, has more scenery than the theater has had in the past or likely will in the future. With a turntable center stage, it’s a way to show off what the stage can do.

“In the second act, the bed has to rotate,” said set designer Jack Magaw. “It’s not a surprise when it happens but the way the comedy is set up, it’s hilarious when it does happen.”

Since that first day seeing the stage, the core company has already started to adjust.

“The acoustics are so much better,” said Jim DeVita, a core company member who directs a new adaptation of “Cyrano de Bergerac” opening in previews on June 23.

“We’ve been waiting for that for 25 years,” he said. In “Cyrano,” “I had Jim Ridge at the top of an aisle saying something to the stage. I said, ‘Move over in front of the wall and tilt your head up,’ and as soon as he did, it bounced off the back wall and I could hear him perfectly.”

Though veteran APT actors pride themselves on their hardiness, wrestling with spiders in cinderblock showers no longer seemed necessary to create quality theater in 2017. In a second live video that Young shot, all of the actors are grinning as they wander through expanded dressing rooms and clean showers.

“I’m just excited to see plays on the stage,” said Broh. “I’ve been working on this stage for three years and it’s nice to see it completed.

“But in the same way a play isn’t done until you have an audience, the stage isn’t done until you have a play on it. I’m excited to get an audience in there, to get through tech rehearsals and see what this thing looks like when we’re doing completed shows in front of a thousand people.

“The real test will be when we get the plays up there.”

Stay up-to-date on what's happening Receive the latest in local entertainment news in your inbox weekly! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy.