Wisconsin theater company celebrates 90 years on stage

The Peninsula Players’ summer season is underway, marking 90 years of performing for audiences on the shores of Green Bay. The Door County company is recognized as the oldest resident summer theater program in the country. 

“Ninety years is a really long time for anything, but especially in the world of theater. And so it’s really thrilling to be a part of such a long tradition,” said Linda Fortunato, the theater’s artistic director, on WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.” 

Fortunato has been with Peninsula Players for more than 20 years, wearing different hats as an actor, director, choreographer and business manager. Now serving as artistic director, one of her duties is to select the repertoire each season, which she does with an eye to programming a wide range of shows and styles. 

“In the 1930s, the founders were really interested in presenting a variety of different things,” Fortunato said. “They would do a Greek tragedy, followed by the latest comedy from Broadway, followed by a musical revue written by the company themselves. And I think that is something that makes our theater unique.”

The 2025 season kicked off last month with performances of “Barefoot in the Park,” a comedy by Neil Simon about newlyweds navigating life. Other plays in the lineup are a stage adaptation of Stephen King’s novel “Misery,” a Broadway musical version of “Little Women,” a romance called “Dear Jack, Dear Louise” and the original play version of “Steel Magnolias.”

Ryan Hallahan is a stage and screen actor based in Chicago who is returning for a second season with Peninsula Players. While starring in the more lighthearted “Barefoot” by night, he has been rehearsing his heavier role in “Misery” during the day. He told “Wisconsin Today” he sees this as a unique opportunity of being in a summer company like Peninsula Players.

“One of the things that I love about working here is having these completely different stories and these completely different characters stacked on top of one another and trying on both of those hats at the same time during the day, and doing it for weeks at a time,” Hallahan said.

For Hallahan, being on-site with other cast and crew members for the whole season brings another layer of depth to the experience.

“We’re taking meals together. We’re hanging out with each other outside of rehearsal or performances. You become a more cohesive group that way, and I think that that translates into the work that you see on stage,” he said.

Another thing that sets Peninsula Players apart is the natural setting. The theater is nestled in a 16-acre wooded property that was formerly Wildwood Boys Camp just outside of Fish Creek. The open air theater is covered on top but open on the sides.

“We like to say Mother Nature is our lobby,” said Audra Baakari Boyle, the business manager for Peninsula Players. “Nature is live as well as the performances on stage.”

Continuing a 90-year tradition

Baakari Boyle is also the theater’s archivist and recently posted a series of videos tracing its history from the founding in 1935. The company has a history of theater professionals foregoing careers in Hollywood or on Broadway to stay in Door County, starting with Caroline Fisher, who co-founded Peninsula Players with her brother, Richard. 

“She had signed a movie contract to go to Hollywood in 1938, and she was very blunt that, ‘I’m not interested in being in Hollywood. I’m only here to make money to keep Peninsula Players alive and thriving,’” Bakaari Boyle said.

Others were able to get their start with Peninsula Players and move on to bigger stages, like actor Leo Lucker, who was with the players for more than 100 performances before going on to Broadway to perform in “Carousel” and other major productions.

Baakari Boyle said one of the most surprising things she has come across in her research is a review of opening night of the company’s very first season in 1935, written by a woman from Madison.

“I about fell out of my chair when I found that news article,” Baakari Boyle said. “She wrote about her experience and what it was like in the garden — that it was a natural setting for art and flowers and flagstones and the stars above to be this magical environment for people to see a show. That’s still the atmosphere we try to provide: that magical fairyland of baby twinkling lights and a bonfire and trees, the shoreline and everything else.”

After a slump in visitors during the COVID-19 pandemic, Fortunato said attendance bounced back last year and is looking strong for this season.

“We still have people who come for the very first time, and we have people whose families have been coming for generations. It’s a really wonderful mix of patrons,” she said. 

Fortunato believes community support is what makes Peninsula Players possible.

“Theater is such a unique art form in that it only exists if there’s someone there to watch it, and so we’re so lucky to have enthusiastic people joining us to make what we do be actually realized,” she said. “It’s so exciting to have people on our grounds enjoying the nature, enjoying our pre-show bar and our intermission bonfire, and to see them all move into the theater together — share a laugh, share a tear, breathe together, gasp together, really creating a community within the audience every night.”

Peninsula Players is performing at the Theatre in a Garden through Oct. 18. Information about the 2025 season is available here.