New faces, collaborations shaping Berkshires theater season

New and old; premieres and standards; light and thought ful –all par t of the mix this summer

BY JEFFREY BORAK

Change is in the air at the region’s theaters this summer.

Two theaters Barrington Stage Company in Pittsfield and Chester Theatre Company in Chester are going into their summer programming under new artistic leadership Another theater, Williamstown Theatre Festival, has changed its programming profile completely; and four theaters are partnering in pairs Barrington Stage Company and Williamstown Theatre Festival; and Berkshire Theatre Group and WAM Theatre on two productions.

In addition, 2023 will be without one of its mainstays The Theater Barn, a non-Equity professional theater in New Lebanon, N.Y., that closed its doors two weeks into its 38th season last summer and has no plans to reopen. Alas, no more murder mysteries by Agatha Christie, whose plays one each summer – were reliable fixtures on The Barn’s stage.

Changes in artistic leadership can be nuanced, subtle rather than explosive and obvious. For the most part, new artistic directors, especially here in the Berkshires, tend to make their mark in cautious, measured terms; honoring the artistic formula that has allowed a theater to sustain itself and grow over time while, at the same time, giving space. for fresh air to seep in and move the theater forward Alan Paul succeeded founding artistic director Julianne Boyd as Barrington Stage Company’s artistic director last fall, shortly after BSC’s 27th season, all of them with Boyd at the helm. It was business as usual in February when BSC presented its annual 10X10 New Play Festival in which Paul made his “soft debut” here as a stage director piloting five of the 10 10-minute plays. His official introduction as a stage director here comes June 14 with the first preview performance of the iconic Kander-Ebb musical “Cabaret” at BSC’s Boyd-Quinson Mainstage.

But in programming his first season, Paul is honoring the associate artists who, over the theater’s now 28-year-old history, have helped shape BSC’s artistic profile playwright Mark St. Germain, whose “The Happiest Man on Earth” begins BSC’s season May 24 in the smaller St. Germain Stage at the Sydelle and Lee Blatt Performing Arts Center; director Joe Calarco, who is piloting “A New Brain,” a musical by another BSC associate artist, composer-lyricist-playwright William Finn; and actors Mark H. Dold, Christopher Innvar and Gretchen Egolf in Brian

Friel’s “Faith Healer,” which will be directed by Boyd. Boyd is not the only recently retired artistic director who will be returning this summer to direct at the theater they once led. Daniel Elihu Kramer, who stepped down as Chester Theatre Company’s artistic director at the end of the 2022 season after seven years, will be returning in August to direct MacArthur Fellow and Pulitzer Prize winner Annie Baker’s much admired “Circle Mirror Transformation,” about five people in a Vermont community who come together regularly for an amateur acting class. It will be the last production of an inaugural season for actor-director James Barry and his wife, actor Tara Franklin, as co-producing artistic directors.

This is an in-house promotion. Barry has performed and directed at Chester Franklin has been associate artistic director and education director at Chester and has appeared in several CTC productions The season she and Barry have out together which begins June 22 with Peter Sinn Nachtreib’s “The Making of a Great Moment,” another play about the making of theater and its connections to our lives is very much in keeping with the small cast, big thought Off-Broadwayish plays that are very much in the fabric of the work that has been done over the years at the theater’s home at Chester Town Hall.

Perhaps the most noticeable and notable change this summer is at Williamstown Theatre Festival. For the first time in its seven decades, rather than a season of fully staged shows on its Main Stage and smaller Nikos Stage, augmented by the WTF Cabaret and special events and readings, this summer, the festival is offering special events featuring Tony Award-winning Broadway star Laura Benanti in concert, and comedian Hasan Monhaj; the WTF Cabaret; and a Main Stage Readings Series comprising three staged readings “Paris, Actors” with Hamish Linklater, who also wrote the play, and Lily Rabe, July 22 and 23; Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters,” July 29 and 30; and Irish playwright Martin McDonagh’s “The Pillowman,” Aug 5 and 6 all on a new, special cabaret stage constructed over the stage in the Main Stage and designed to bring audiences and performers into cozier proximity.

The only fully mounted show the Festival will be presenting this summer is the aforementioned “A New Brain,” in collaboration with Barrington Stage Company. The show will be performed at BSC’s Boyd-Quinson Mainstage.

Williamstown Theatre Festival will not be BSC’s only partner this summer. The Pittsfield-based theater also will be collaborating with Chautauqua Theater Company in Chautauqua, N.Y. for the world premiere in August of Mike Lew’s “tiny father,” June 25-July 3 in BSC’s St. Germain Stage

Collaboration also is the name of the game in Stockbridge when Berkshire Theatre Group opens its 2023 season with Hedi Schreck’s unsettlingly timely “What The Constitution Means to Me” May 18 at BTG’s intimate Unicorn Theatre This production is in association with Lenox-based WAM Theatre whose artistic director, Kristen van Ginhoven, is directing Kate Baldwin stars The play kicks off a season at BTG that highlights the role of women in theater and in life.

Over in Lenox, Shakespeare & Company’s artistic director Allyn Burrows has come up with an intriguing mix of both Shakespeare and company. On the Shakespeare side is something quite familiar and extremely audience-friendly, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and something not so familiar “The Contention, ” a boldly theatrical treatment of Shakespeare’s rarely seen “Henry VI, Part II ” The “& Company” side features work by two Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning playwrights August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning “Fences” in its first-ever Berkshires production (also the first ever Berkshires production of any Wilson play); and the world premiere of Donald Margulies’ “Lunar Eclipse ” And fold in Tony Award-winning playwright Ken Ludwig’s 2020 Helen Hayes award-winning romantic comedy, “Dear Jack, Dear Louise ” Rounding out the Shakespeare & Company season is a staged reading of “Hamlet” and an eight-performance revival of William Gibson’s “Golda’s Balcony” starring Annette Miller.

And if you’re looking for familiar, just-kick-back-andrelax musicals on the order of “Godspell,” “The Sound of Music,” “Footloose” and Jersey Boys,” among others, there is the Mac-Haydn Theatre in Chatham. N.Y.

New and old; premieres and standards; light and thoughtful – all part of the mix that is theater-making and going in the Berkshires. See you on the aisle!