American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin to Receive the 2026 Regional Theatre Tony Award

Chloe Rabinowitz, Broadway World

American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin will be the recipient of the 2026 Regional Theatre Tony Award. The honor, recognizing a regional theatre company that has displayed a continuous level of artistic achievement contributing to the growth of theatre nationally, is accompanied by a grant of $25,000, made possible by City National Bank’s generous support.

“American Players Theatre is a one-of-a-kind institution, delivering world-class theatre presentations to the Midwest for decades, and we are thrilled to recognize the team there with this award,” said Heather Hitches, President and CEO of the American Theatre Wing and Jason Laks, President of The Broadway League. “They have succeeded in their mission of illuminating the shared human experience through timeless classics, and in doing so, have broadened the theatre-going audience in their community and beyond.”

“As the official bank of the Tony Awards, City National Bank is honored to celebrate the extraordinary achievements of American Players Theatre, a standard of excellence in live performance,” said JaHan Wang, executive vice president and head of Entertainment & Sports Banking, City National Bank. “We are proud to support the dramatic arts, both on Broadway and across the nation, and to help ensure that the transformative power of theater continues to inspire audiences for generations to come.”

American Players Theatre

American Players Theatre (APT) is a professional theater located just outside Spring Green – a rural town with a population of 1,573 – 40 miles west of Madison, Wisconsin. Now in its 47th season, APT has two theaters: the flagship, 1075-seat outdoor amphitheater and the 201-seat indoor Touchstone Theatre. From June through November, APT produces nine plays in rotating repertory, and welcomes nearly 100,000 guests seeking a world-class performance under the sky and stars.

APT’s mission is to perform timeless, challenging, poetic texts, with Shakespeare at the center, to the broadest audience possible. The company is devoted to creating a unique and personal experience for the audience through clear and compelling storytelling inside of language-based, poetic plays. APT believes that works widely regarded as classics remain relevant and powerful today, and that this theater is also uniquely positioned to seek out and explore work with potential to become classics for future generations.

APT was founded by Randall Duk Kim, Anne Occhiogrosso, and Charles Bright on the belief that the great plays of the Western Canon, Shakespeare in particular, were best performed in the manner intended by the playwright. The first performance was Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream on July 18, 1980. The play ran in a rotating repertory that season with Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. The founders searched throughout Wisconsin to find a location for their theater that was in proximity to potential audiences but outside an urban center. The site on which APT settled was a farmstead located four miles outside the rural village of Spring Green and less than two miles from the Wisconsin River and Taliesin, Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and school.

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