Barrington Stage sets its season
Pittsfield venue plans 7 shows, with precautions taken
Barrington Stage Company will produce seven shows this year, three under an open-sided tent and four in a theater with sharply reduced seating capacity.
Barrington Stage is the sole big summer theater ensemble in the Berkshires to announce indoor performances so far for summer 2021. Last year, BSC was one of only two theater companies in the country to receive approval from the Actors’ Equity union for performances by its members during the pandemic summer, for a one-man show that BSC put on in a parking lot because indoor performances were not allowed. (The other production, coincidentally, was also staged in Pittsfield, by Berkshire Theatre Group.)
Barrington Stage’s main theater, the Boydquinson Stage downtown, will host audiences capped at 160, a drop from its original capacity of 530 as a result of the removal of alternating rows of seats and separation between parties attending together. The company will be able to accommodate 180 to 200 people under a tent in a large parking lot at BSC’S new technical facility for sets and other production needs, located in a 22,000-square-foot former warehouse in an industrial section of the city.
“Planning the season was incredibly tricky,” Julianne Boyd, the company’s producing artistic director, said in an interview. She announced season details on Tuesday. Boyd said, “We had to build in contingencies in case we had to pivot,” including being able to move a Boyd-quinson Stage production to the outdoor venue if Massachusetts were to again prohibit indoor performances. Additional flexibility built into the season includes extra time after most productions are scheduled to close that allows for performance extensions if there is sufficient demand, Boyd said.
Beyond seating changes in the Boyd-quinson theater, Barrington Stage improved its HVAC and air circulation and will conduct deep cleaning after every performance, Boyd said. Masks will be required for audience and staff.
The 2021 season includes three world premieres: two plays and a musical.
The Boyd-quinson Stage season:
A June 18 to July 3: “Chester Bailey,” by Joseph
Dougherty. The father-son duo of Tony Award winner Reed Birney (“The Humans,” “House of Cards”) and Ephraim Birney (“Gotham,” “The Americans”) co-star as doctor and patient in a World War II drama.
A July 16 to Aug. 1: “Eleanor,” a one-woman show about legendary first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, by BSC associate artist and frequent contributing playwright Mark St. Germain. Tony Award winner Harriet Harris (BSC’S “Thoroughly Modern Millie”) will reprise the role she created for a streamed BSC reading of “Eleanor” last fall.
A Aug. 12 to 29: “Sister Sorry.” A new play by The New Yorker magazine writer Alec Wilkinson, loosely based on a truecrime confession.
A Sept. 23 to Oct. 17: World premiere of a new dance musical co-conceived by BSC associate artist Joshua Bergasse and St. Germain, with book by St. Germain and music and lyrics by award-winning songwriter Zoe Sarnak. Created in association with Calpulli Mexican Dance Company and directed and choreographed by Bergasse.
BSC Production Center season:
A June 10 to July 3: “Who Can Ask for Anything More? The Songs of George Gershwin,” a concert-style celebration of the work of one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century. Conceived by Boyd and Darren R. Cohen (BSC’S “On the Town,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Follies”), with musical direction by Cohen and choreography by Jeffrey L. Page. Boyd will direct.
A July 9 to 24: TBA.
A July 30 to Aug. 22: World premiere of “Boca,” an evening of short comedies about seniors living in Florida, by Jessica Provenz. Commissioned by BSC and directed by Boyd.
Tickets and season passes go on sale April 12 via 413-236-8888 and barringtonstageco.org. Tickets for the Boydquinson Stage and the outdoor venue productions cost $35 to $95 ($35 to $50 for preview performances). Bundles of three or more tickets may be purchased at a 25 to 30 percent discount.
Berkshire Theatre Group has announced that productions at its venues in Stockbridge and Pittsfield will be under open-air tents, as will shows at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox. Williamstown Theatre Festival in Williamstown, which presented all of its 2020 titles as audio productions on the Audible platform, will announce its plans for 2021 later this week, a representative said Tuesday.