Playwriting In Process

BERKSHIRE THEATERS ARE DEVOTED TO DARING NEW WORKS

By Haas Regen

It was the summer of 1969. As American astronauts landed on the moon, the renowned Romanian-French playwright Eugène Ionesco was in Stockbridge preparing for the U.S. premiere of his play, Hunger and Thirst, at the Berkshire Theatre Festival. Actor-director Bob Jaffe was an apprentice that season. “I was interested in directing at that time, so they assigned me this new play. Here I am, 17 years old. I walk into the rehearsal hall, and sitting six feet away from me are Ionesco, his wife, and his daughter, who served as the translator. Arthur Storch was directing. Lyn Austin was the producer back then—she was a fervent believer in new work.”

Kate Maguire, Berkshire Theatre Group’s artistic director and CEO, sits with Pulitzer Prize- and Tony®-winning playwright David Auburn in the Mortimer Lloyd Artist House in Pittsfield.

Oscar-nominated actor Bruce Davison, who has appeared in two of this year’s most-watched Netflix shows, Ozark and The Lincoln Lawyer, was in the cast that summer. “We were staying at the old Heaton Hall,” Davison recounts. “I would drive [Ionesco] up to the hotel after work. His daughter must have taught him some English because he got out of the car one day and said, ‘It’s a looong way up that hill!’”

For any artist who has ever attempted a new play, it’s a fitting metaphor.

“It was radical to have chosen that play at a summer theater. It was such a big production and so weird in its absurdist, dream-like way,” remembers actor Peter Maloney. “We used to have drinks together at the Red Lion Inn. For Ionesco to be there with us and be so human, so amusing, and so very wise—it was the greatest, just the greatest!”

More than a half-century later, artists seeking both solace and stimulation seem to find their sweet spot in the Berkshire hills. In 2010, the Berkshire Theatre Festival merged with the Colonial Theatre to form Berkshire Theatre Group. Along with the region’s other houses—Barrington Stage Company, Shakespeare & Company, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and several ambitious new companies—Berkshire Theatre Group remains dedicated to clearing paths for living playwrights.

Great Barrington Public Theater’s Artistic Director Jim Frangione (right) with playwright Mark St. Germain at at the Daniel Arts Center.

“Our theater has always been a place where artists feel comfortable to create,” says Kate Maguire, Berkshire Theatre Group’s artistic director and CEO. “There’s something about the poetry of the natural surroundings—it’s intoxicating no matter the season.”

Pulitzer Prize- and Tony®-winning play- wright David Auburn, who is directing the stage production of Dracula at the Colonial Theatre (August 11-27), reminisc- es about his first time working with pro- fessional actors here in the Berkshires. “It was in 1995 or ’96. It was a staged reading of my play, Skyscraper. It was a coming-of-age experience. I had the feeling that I was part of an old tradition in the American theater. This was a theater with really deep and illustrious roots. You’re rehearsing on the stage where Katharine Hepburn made her debut and where Arthur Penn directed, and countless major theater art- ists have done work in that room. So, you feel you’re part of something that’s greater than yourself.”

This past spring, Auburn and Berkshire Theatre Group partnered with the New York City’s esteemed Roundabout Theatre Company to host four playwrights of distinction for a weeklong playwriting intensive. They stayed at the Mortimer Lloyd Artist House in Pittsfield, formerly the Thaddeus Clapp House. Accommodations are now available year-round, and Berkshire Theatre Group will work with Roundabout to cultivate and nourish new theatrical work by both emerging and established playwrights.

“It’s the perfect setting,” affirms Maguire. “We’ve invited them to come back in the fall or the spring, and we’ll put their pieces up as readings with an invited audience. Then, who knows? We could have four new plays running in the Unicorn Theatre next year.”

Berkshire Theatre Group’s Kate Maguire (right) with playwright Tara L. Wilson Noth.

The world premiere of Tara L. Wilson Noth’s B.R.O.K.E.N code B.I.R.D switching is playing at the Unicorn in Stockbridge through July 9. The production is a culmination of Wilson Noth’s 15-year journey with this script. Its subject is a lawyer tasked with representing a Black teenager accused of murder. “The first draft of this play was written in 2007. I put it in a drawer and said I didn’t know if anyone would connect with it or understand it,” admits Wilson Noth.

“But the world has changed a lot. There are conversations we’re having now that weren’t being had then.”

In the summer of 2018, Maguire helped Wilson Noth assemble the first table reading of the play. The following year, Berkshire Theatre Group produced a workshop that led to limited workshop engagement in Los Angeles. Maguire flew across the country to see the play’s progress and show her support. “Throughout the entire experience, Berkshire Theatre Group has been so supportive,” Wilson Noth attests. “You feel like you’ve got somebody holding you up, a net. They make you feel like you cannot fail. They live it day in and day out, their commitment to the arts. It’s not words. They live it.”

Barrington Stage’s outgoing artistic director, Julianne Boyd, has demonstrated a similarly steadfast commitment to new work. In 2003, she began collaborating with playwright Mark St. Germain, whose Ears on a Beetle and The God Committee were staged in back-to-back seasons. As luck would have it, in 2004, the company also had the opportunity to develop what would later become one of the most beloved and most-produced musicals of our time, William Finn and Rachel Sheinkin’sThe 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. It was a pivotal time for Barrington Stage and a game-changer for theater in the Berkshires.

“Since then, you see more plays starting out in regional theater—especially musical works,” Boyd notes. “In the past, producers used to try musicals out in places like New Haven or Philadelphia before taking them to Broadway. But they don’t have the money to do that anymore. Over the last 15 years or so, regional theatre companies have started saying, we’ll develop it our- selves and then get the producers here to see it.”

Case in point: Last fall, Barrington Stage presented a developmental production of Jason Robert Brown and Amanda Green’s new musical adaptation of Mr. Saturday Night. Billy Crystal, who directed and starred in the 1992 film, co-wrote the book with his collaborators, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, and revisited the role of Buddy Young Jr. onstage. Under the direction of John Rando, the musical moved to Broadway’s Nederlander Theatre in the spring, and continues into the fall. It was nominated for five Tony Awards®—one of many success stories for Barrington Stage. In 2018, the company premiered Lloyd Suh’s The Chinese Lady, directed by Ralph B. Peña. A co-production with New York’s Ma-Yi Theater Company, Suh’s play ran Off-Broadway at the Public Theater last February.

Meanwhile, St. Germain has penned so many new plays for Barrington Stage that they renamed one of their stages in his honor. Two notable contributions, Freud’s Last Session (2009) and Becoming Dr. Ruth (2012), have played all over the country. The small-cast formula works brilliantly, and St. Germain knows not to fix what isn’t broken. His biodrama Eleanor, commissioned initially by Florida Studio Theatre in Sarasota, had its world premiere at Barrington Stage last season with Harriet Harris as Eleanor Roosevelt.

“Julianne Boyd has been responsible for most of my theatre career,” states St. Germain. In recognition of her achievement, Barrington Stage’s Board of Directors created in 2019 the Julianne Boyd New Works Fund. With the support of Sydelle and Lee Blatt and Bonnie and Terry Burman, the Fund endeavors to find, as well as commission, new plays from unknown, talented playwrights. Unlike some other regional theaters, Barrington Stage does not postpone producing their new play commissions. All too often, theaters let the plays lie dormant until they fit into a particular sea- son’s theme or budget plan. “We don’t do that,” maintains Boyd. “After a play does a workshop, we’ll wait a few months and then put it on the schedule or release it. I don’t want to hold the writer back. It’s like saying you have a beautiful painting and don’t hang it up!”

This month, Barrington Stage will host two world premieres: May Treuhaft-Ali’s ABCD (July 1–23), which tackles the subject of inequities in the public school system, and Joel Waggoner and Sukari Jones’s musical adaptation of The Supadupa Kid (July 29–August 13) by local author Ty Allan Jackson. Commissioned by Jodi and Paul Tartell and directed by NJ Agwuna, the musical will feature kids from the Berkshire community. “Jackson wrote a book that is zero-percent pretentious and one-hundred percent fun. And Waggoner is a wonderful composer for the piece,” declares Jones, the musical’s lyricist and book writer (and William Finn’s former student at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program). “We’re trying to involve people from Pittsfield because the show is about Pittsfield. As an artist, I believe access is power. Kids deserve theatre that talks up to them. They get subliminal cues that they have options. The message to Black and Brown children, among others, is to do whatever you want, including being a participant as well as a creator of theater.”

Playwright, librettist, and screenwriter Harrison David Rivers says he “wanted to add something Black and gay and full of hope” with his play we are continuous, a Williamstown Theatre Festival commission that will have its world premiere at the Nikos Stage in August. “There is a level of engagement in the Berkshires. The audiences seem to crave a challenge,” observes Rivers. “They want to think and feel deeply. They want to debate. They want to be talking about what they witnessed when they’re at dinner and then the next day and the next day.”

“The Berkshire audiences are so sophisticated, and they’re so enthusiastic,” Auburn concurs. “They’re not just theatergoers, but they’re arts patrons. You know you are doing the work for people who know a lot and who are connoisseurs and who have strong opinions and long experience of seeing plays. That’s really valuable—you get their feedback, and you get to have their attention.”

Shakespeare & Company Artistic Director Allyn Burrows intends to “keep the muse open” when it comes to unheard, unfamiliar, or unfinished texts. In a new addition to the company’s repertoire, the Plays in Process series will run for five weekends this summer, July 9– August 7 at the Tina Packer Playhouse.

“Obviously, Shakespeare was a new playwright at one time, and he had to have patrons. So, we want to strike a balance between the traditional and some of the extraordinary new work that’s happening,” Burrows says. “We want to keep an eye on a platform for BIPOC artists. We offer residencies over the course of several weeks and provide housing. I want these artists to know they have an inviting studio and laboratory. There are actors here on the property and in the county who can work with them. We’d be remiss if we didn’t take advantage of the resources we have at hand.”

Actor, director, playwright, and producer Jim Frangione has been nurturing that local talent pool for 15 years. In 2007, he co-founded the Berkshire Playwrights Lab (BPL) along with writer-director Joe Cacaci and actor-director Bob Jaffe. Their goal was to create a safe space for playwrights to share their work. They invited actor, director, and producer Matthew Penn to join the team during their first year of operation. Together, they assembled staged readings of over 60 new plays with Tony®-, Emmy®, and Oscar®-winning writers and actors. Works like Jane Anderson’s Mother of the Maid enjoyed success here in the Berkshires and New York. “I found it while I was reading scripts for the new BPL season. We developed it at BPL. The following season, I directed a full production of the play at Shakespeare & Company,” recalls Penn. In 2018, stage and screen legend Glenn Close portrayed the play’s titular character under Penn’s direction at New York’s Public Theater. “The Berkshires played an essential role in the development and life of that play,” Penn asserts. “I was proud of that.”

Earlier this year, Berkshire Playwrights Lab announced that it would be closing its doors, leaving behind an outstanding legacy in service to playwrights all over the country. Despite ongoing restrictions due to the pandemic, Frangione’s newest enterprise, Great Barrington Public Theater, has already found firm footing. After producing three new plays last season, they’re back this summer for ten weeks of in-person performances at the Daniel Arts Center on the campus of Bard College at Simon’s Rock. Their motto: “New plays, local talent, affordable prices.”

“Only could that mission statement be fulfilled in a community like the Berkshires,” claims actor-director James Warwick. “The number of people who write, act, design, direct, paint, and go to the theater here—it’s extraordinary.” When Frangione set up Great Barrington Public Theater, Warwick was enthusiastic: “I thought, Ah-ha! The man has found his place! Everything he’s done before as an actor, director, dramaturg, and producer—it has all come together. I’m slightly in awe of him.”

Frangione and his co-founder, theater artist Deann Simmons Halper, are determined to establish the theater as a destination for new plays. Last season, they debuted local playwright Anne Undeland’s Mr. Fullerton, based on recently discovered diaries of Edith Wharton. The play will have a new iteration at Gloucester Stage this month. Its director, Judy Braha, reunites with Undeland to advance the work they started in the Berkshires.

“It’s risky to throw your weight behind a new play because it hasn’t been proven yet. Great Barrington Public Theater is willing to take that chance because they believe in the new work of the writers,” explains Braha. “Because the company is entirely devoted to those writers, there was a different way of approaching the creative process. Everybody’s voice was important— that includes actors, producers, designers, and stage managers. We could all ask the playwright about the story she wanted to tell, what we saw on the page, and how we could explore things even more deeply. It’s an honor to be in that position.”

Frangione directed Mark St. Germain’s new comedy, Dad, last season, and the two are back working together on Public Speaking 101 (July 14–August 14). Originally commissioned by Barrington Stage, the play will run at the 300-seat McConnell mainstage theater. “It’s a terrific, collaborative atmosphere,” raves St. Germain. “And this is the time for it. This is the time for it to grow. There’s a special connection between human beings onstage and in the audience that can’t be replicated elsewhere. It’s about as social as you can get.”

From Great Barrington in the south to Williamstown in the north, the Berkshires afford an idyllic and inspiring environment where playwrights and other artists may genuinely escape, expand, experiment—or simply unwind. Frangione jokingly agrees. “Here, we get to be in the fresh air with the trees and the black bears stealing seed from the bird feeder. Isn’t that magical?”

“Knowing that you can get up from your desk and go and hike up Monument Mountain—you breathe a little differently,” Auburn opines. “There are vibes in the air. Melville lived here. Edith Wharton lived here. Creative things have been happening in the Berkshires for hundreds of years, and you feel that in some way.”

“You only have to imagine what the Berkshires would be without the arts for 30 seconds. It would hollow out,” suggests Penn, who predicts film is the new horizon for artists living and working in Western Massachusetts. “The film community is growing. Artists build with and on fellow artists, whether it’s dance or classical music or theater and film. Art begets art.”