SPRING GREEN, Wis. (WMTV) – The American Players Theatre brought audiences back to its hill stage Saturday for the first opening night in two years.
“It feels like home,” artistic director Brenda DeVita said. “And to be out here with people in the audience, it feels right.”
For the Spring Green outdoor theater to open this season, DeVita said she had to communicate with fans.
“They were waiting for us to say when we felt it was right, and we were waiting for them to tell us they were ready to come,” she said.
The theater is enforcing a mask rule for everyone besides actors on stage, and audiences will be capped at 25 percent. Meanwhile some fans said they weren’t nervous about anything.
“We’re vaccinated,” Valerie Mau, who came to watch a show with her husband, said. “People are really conscientious, and we’re feeling good.”
Fans are also returning indoors to movie theaters. “It’s been almost two years, so this is huge,” Brenda Seubert said at the Marcus Palace Cinema on Saturday.
According to general manager Tom Reichelt, the Sun Prairie theater has yet to revive ticket sales to pre-pandemic times.
“There’s some people that may not want to come back, and I would argue there are more people now that want to leave and come to theaters now because they’ve been in their house,” he said.
Reichelt said Memorial Day weekend marks the start of the summer blockbuster season, and, for him, it’s a chance to build “momentum” again.
“This is a time with the new movies, with different amenities now that we didn’t have before. We have concessions you can order from your phone and be ready to be picked up when you walk in. We deliver to the seats,” he said.
Innovations have also become a must in live theater.
“There are still people who don’t feel safe and particularly [feel] like they need or want to get out quite out yet and be in a large crowd,” DeVita said. “So we have taken on filming all of our productions, which is a major undertaking. We aren’t movie makers. We make plays.”
Major cinema chains, including AMC, Regal and Cinemark, said fully vaccinated customers no longer have to wear masks inside their theaters. The companies also said they will follow local mask rules.
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