Association of Producing Artists

Association of Producing Artists. Popularly known as APA, it was founded by Ellis Rabb in 1960 and gave its first performances in Bermuda. After serving briefly as the acting company at Princeton's McCarter Theatre, it moved first to the Fred Miller Theatre in Milwaukee, then to the Folksbiene Playhouse in New York, then later became the resident company at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. In 1964 it joined the Phoenix Theatre at its small Off‐Broadway house, where it won applause for its productions of The Tavern, Right You Are If You Think You Are, The Lower Depths, and Scapin. Depleted funds forced it to return to Michigan, where its mounting of You Can't Take It with You was so successful that it was brought to Broadway in 1965. The company spent several seasons at the Lyceum Theatre in New York, including in its repertory The School for Scandal, Pantagleize, The Cherry Orchard (staged by Eva Le Gallienne and starring Uta Hagen), and a rousingly successful 1967 revival of The Show‐Off, with Helen Hayes. Although a subsequent tour of the George Kelly play helped fill the company's coffers, internal differences, including the departure of Rosemary Harris, its finest regular, hurt the troupe, and after several failures it was, for all practical purposes, left in limbo. Several members of the group reunited in 1975 for a superb revival of The Royal Family.