When performance art meets the outdoors, the Peninsula Players Theatre offers a new sensory experience.
Leaves rustle across the ground, the scent of a bonfire fills the air, a slice of the orange horizon breaks through the trees to show the waters of Green Bay. Wisconsin’s natural beauty creates its own stage, but sometimes even she gets to take a seat and enjoy a show.
Since its opening in 1935, Peninsula Players Theatre has been a landmark for residents and visitors of Fish Creek, Wisconsin. From its barn-under-the-stars origins to its current state-of-the-art stage, the theater has transformed performance for actors and audience members alike. From start to finish, the experience at Peninsula Players is rooted in true Wisconsin beauty.
Theater is an experience that is personal, special and immeasurable for many. Combining the age-old art of theater performance with the soothing, refreshing feeling of the Wisconsin outdoors gives Peninsula Players Theatre, and others like it, a uniqueness that is often hard to come by. Door County lends itself well to the theater setting, putting audiences at the brink of nature and helping them unearth the pleasure of natural art.
Turning off of Highway 42—which runs between Egg Harbor, Wisconsin, and Fish Creek—and onto Peninsula Players Road, audience members are immediately transported from the quickly passing cars and Fish Creek attractions to rows of trees as far as the eye can see.
In the warmer months, the greens, browns, yellows and reds of the trees guide guests to the Peninsula Players Theatre. As theater interns usher cars into two forest-covered parking lots, views of water peek out between the trees. “It’s a very special kind of place to watch theater,” says Tim Monsion, a veteran actor at Peninsula Players.
Monsion performed in his first show with Peninsula Players in 1997. Though he lives in Los Angeles and performs in movies and shows like “Frasier,” “Desperate Housewives” and “Monk,” he returns to the Players often and jokes that “now they can’t get rid of me.” As an actor, he says, the experience is completely unique.
“You can’t help [it]—you walk out on the stage at Peninsula Players and some nights, especially in the height of summer when the sun goes down late…you see the gardens and it’s distracting for a moment,” Monsion says.
Before shows, guests are welcomed onto the grounds where they can have a picnic and enjoy drinks served at the Luna Bar or the Canteen. The theater grounds run to the edge of Lake Michigan, where audience members can sit or stand to watch the sunset on a rocky beach. After sunset, attendees are welcome to head back toward the theater and enjoy a bonfire at intermission in the center of the beer garden.
Inside the theater, which was rebuilt in 2006 in the footprints of the original theater, the audience is surrounded by a sturdy wooden structure. The sides of the building open up to face the two gardens on the grounds, the Beer Garden and the Far Garden, but can close when the weather is too chilly or not conducive to the performance. This allows the theater to transform throughout the year and the rotation of elements.
“The genius of what they did do with the new theater is cut down as few trees as they could and basically sat down a state-of-the-art, brand new theater in the middle of the woods in a way that, if you haven’t been there in a few years, you wouldn’t notice it until you actually walk into the theater,” Monsion says. “The gardens are still the same…they did such a good job of maintaining the original gardens.”
Listen below and meet Michael Peterson, Assistant Professor of Theater at UW-Madison and outdoor theater veteran.
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Although the season finishes in October, the theater is open year round, operating through the winter, preparing for the upcoming summer months. During the off-season, the company runs as many other traditional theaters do.
Artistic director Greg Vinkler and managing director Brian Kelsey meet to discuss the lineup of shows for the season. Once Kelsey secures the rights for the plays and coordinates with the different unions of actors, choreographers and scenic artists, the real work begins.
As the trees come alive again in the spring, the grounds transform into a hotel-like campus, Kelsey says, to accommodate those working on a show.
“It’s beautiful and so close to nature,” Vinkler says. “[W]hen the pressure gets to be high, we can just walk outside, walk out to the water, take a few deep breaths and put it all into perspective and go back in and get back to work.”
Summer is the busiest time of year for the theater for both on-campus attendance—sometimes as many as 50 people live on campus at once—and show attendance. Vinkler describes the experience as similar to going to summer camp.
“It has that feeling because that’s all you’re doing—life becomes very simple,” he says.
The group builds a camaraderie that only comes from spending every day with each other, he says. Throughout the summer, the Players’ cast and crew celebrate their own holidays and occasions like Christmas in July, pumpkin carving and a boathouse party created by theater interns.
Monsion says that summer is the most interesting time of year for the theater because the pace of it all picks up and acting talents are put to the test. Shows change over quickly and often the actors rehearse one show during the day and perform a different show in the evening to keep the season moving along quickly.
“These wonderful sets get changed within one day and another day later we’re playing to an audience,” Monsion says. “[I]t’s all in this beautiful, bucolic summer setting, and people work extremely hard, but you can’t imagine working in a better place. You feel like you’re kind of working in a paradise.”
That paradise feeling extends from the cast and crew of the theater into the audience. Kelsey explains that the greatest difference for audience members of the theater is the key word: experience. In a typical theater outing, the experience doesn’t truly start until the lights dim. But, at Peninsula Players, audience members are encouraged to arrive early, exhale and enjoy themselves prior to seeing a play.
“You’re really relaxed before you actually go into the theater,” Kelsey says. “It’s the whole thing that happens when you come to a show here. It’s very much regional theater… but we’re in the woods and we’re giving you an experience as part of being in the woods and being in Door County that’s very unique.”
Theatergoer Jana Rodriguez has traveled to Door County for years. Her experiences at Peninsula Players, she says, feel intimate and comfortable, while still providing a night-on-the-town kind of feeling that traditional theater often brings.
“There isn’t a lot of hustle and bustle, [it’s] just more laid back,” she says. “To me, it made me more appreciative of the work the actors, the crew and the owners put into these plays they put on all summer.”
Rodriguez cherishes the land around the theater most of all.
“I like being in nature and that they incorporate the setting…the theater is just great,” she says. “The way they keep the theater open on perfect nights makes a huge difference to me and is something you can’t really get anywhere else.”
Being so close to nature presents a few unique challenges—namely, animals in the theater. Mosquitoes, moths and other flying creatures are quick to invade the well-lit spaces of a stage. “You basically had to deal with bats at least two or three times a week,” Monsion says. “You would think of pre-arranged ad-libs in case the bats would fly at you.”
Monsion also tells the story of a bat following in a line of actors during a farce at the theater. Each actor entered the stage and, after they had all crossed the stage, a bat followed them through the theater, circled the stage and flew out.
On top of bats, theatergoers encounter some other wildlife intruders making inopportune entrances.
“There was one show where some of us were standing at the back of the theater and this little baby skunk just wandered in and went under the audience,” Vinkler says tentatively. “We stood there and waited for a scream or total disruption and nothing happened.”
And so, despite some critter surprises, the show goes on, even when Mother Nature makes a cameo.
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