Tracy Michelle Arnold: About the Artist

Click here to listen to her interview.

Core Company Actor & Co-Director of The Language Project at the American Players Theater

Tracy Michelle Arnold has been acting professionally in the American regional theatre since 1990 when she booked her first union gig by going along on an audition with a college boyfriend on a whim.

Since then, she has earned both a Bachelors and a Master’s Degree in Acting, and has performed in a host of theatres across the country including Asolo Repertory, Indiana Rep, Milwaukee Rep, The Goodman Theatre, Steppenwolf, Writers Theatre, Northlight, Forward Theatre Company, Milwaukee Chamber Theatre and many more.  Most notably, her artistic home of the past 25 years, American Players Theatre in Spring Green, WI.  She began with APT in 1999 and is a member of its Core Acting Company, alongside her husband, Marcus Truschinski (“true-shin-ski”), whom she met at APT in 2003 and married on the APT grounds in 2006.  The couple share a home in Spring Green with their now 16 year-old son, Gus.  

In addition to Shakespeare, Tracy has also performed in works by such theatrical luminaries as George Bernard Shaw, Anton Chekhov, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, August Strindberg, Noel Coward, Somerset Maugham, Eugène Ionesco, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neil, Tom Stoppard, Lilllian Hellman, Caryl Churchill, Thornton Wilder, and Harold Pinter, along with more modern works by Tom Stoppard, Jen Silverman, Sharr White, Jon Robin Baitz and Lucas Hnath, to name a few.   (In over 100 productions, some of her favorite roles include: Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, Queen Margaret in Richard III, Linda Lohman in Death of a Salesman, Kate in The Taming of the Shrew, Judith in Hay Fever, Amanda in Private Lives, Mme du Merteuil in Les Liason Dangereuses, Regina in The Little Foxes, Queen Marguerite in Exit the King,  and most recently, Queen Adahlia in the world premiere of Michael Hollinger’s The Virgin Queen Entertains her Fool, which played in APT’s 2024 season.

Tracy has twice been nominated for Joseph Jefferson Awards for her work on Chicago stages, and most recently, she was named Co-Director of APT’s The Language Project, a series of two week intensive retreats for early career actors who are hungry to dive into the words of a playwright in a quest for specificity and clarity of thought.