‘Dame’ Sarah Day retires from American Players Theatre after 40 years

The Capital Times | By Lindsay Christians | April 23, 2026

Sarah Day’s 40-year-long career at American Players Theatre almost never happened.

A few months before she stepped onstage as Anne Page in “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” APT co-founder Randall Duk Kim tearfully announced at a Madison press conference that the company would close because of financial strain.

Day auditioned for the classic repertory company in Spring Green in the fall of 1985. She recalls now that she performed “a monologue of Cleopatra’s” in front of the whole company. Kim laughed during her audition, which thrilled her.

“I was floating on air,” she said.

But by the following February, Day was living and temping in Chicago when her parents sent her a front page headline reading, in part, “APT downfall.”

Within a few weeks, the Cap Times reported an “outpouring of support,” and Day’s audition was back on the table. Day’s friend, the late actor Stephen Hemming, called her: “Come up to Spring Green or meet in Madison … tell them that you’d like to audition for them again.”

Day called. Leadership remembered her. By May 1986, she was a member of the company where she would spend the next four decades.

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