In a Zoom press conference on Tuesday morning, Jan. 24, Barrington Stage Company Artistic Director Julianne Boyd announced her 27th season, and made a quirky sort of history doing so. Her public has always been concerned with her season themes and this year’s theme is quite different. It is her final season with the company she and Susan Sperber founded when they left the Berkshire Theatre Festival (now Berkshire Theatre Group) to “start a company that would extend the theater season forward into the autumn and backward into the spring.” With the exception of the 10×10 Festival of New Plays, which begins public performances in a few weeks, and her final presentation of the year, Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting For Godot,” all of this season’s professional shows share an odd commonality: all of their titles begin with the letter “A.”
It is almost an indication of a new beginning, as the company continues its search for a new director. There are 26 letters in the alphabet, and for this 27th year in her reign, Boyd is looking back at the beginning of things. It’s subtle, but it’s there.
Her mainstage (Boyd-Quinson Stage) shows begin June 15 with “Ain’t Misbehavin’: The Fats Waller Musical Show.” It plays through July 9 and is followed on July 16 by Nilo Cruz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Anna In the Tropics,” a Broadway hit from 2002, which plays through July 30. That is succeeded by the Stephen Sondheim musical “A Little Night Music,” opening August 6 and running through August 22. Boyd will direct this show herself. “All of Me” by Laura Winters opens September 21 and runs through October 9. This world-premiere play tells the story of a couple who use wheelchairs and communicate through text-to-speech. Reportedly, the entire design team for this show will also be made up of persons who are disabled.
The company’s second, smaller space (St. Germain Stage), begins its season with Brent Askari’s “Andy Warhol in Iran,” a two-character play which runs from June 2–29. It will be followed by “ABCD” by May Treuhaft-Ali from July 1–23. This is a play about public school education in two very different big-city communities and how their economic worlds create their irreconcilable differences. Breaking the “A” mold will be this year’s youth show, “The Supadupa Kid,” a musical, which will run for two weeks beginning July 29. All of these shows are world premieres.
“Waiting for Godot” completes the second-stage season with a two-week run, opening August 19. It will be directed by Berkshire Theatre Critics award winner Joe Calarco.
The Boyd-Quinson Stage is located at 30 Union Street in Pittsfield, Massachusetts and the St. Germain Stage is a few blocks north at 36 Linden Street. Pittsfield is this company’s Broadway.
Although Boyd announced her retirement from BSC this past November, it will not end her involvement with company’s future. She fully intends to be back in The Berkshires directing one show a year. Even so, the season themes will no longer come from her, but rather from the person who “succeeds her,” as board president Marita Glodt phrased it at the press conference. “No one can really ‘replace’ her,” she said. With this quirky and adventurous season, Boyd departs with impact.
