Nestled within the mountains of western Massachusetts, Berkshire Theatre Group has a protracted historical past of manufacturing dwell efficiency, together with theatre, dance, music, and extra. Based because the Berkshire Playhouse in 1928, the theatre has featured performances by everybody from Ethel Barrymore to Al Pacino over time, and grown right into a full-scale nonprofit group known as Berkshire Theatre Pageant, with a community-driven mission and sturdy academic programming.

The corporate has produced reveals yearly since its founding, surviving the Nice Melancholy, the Second World Struggle, and extra lately, the Covid-19 pandemic. The Pageant mixed with the newly restored Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield in 2010 to create Berkshire Theatre Group, whose grounds now embody two historic landmarks. Berkshire’s 4 venues are divided between two campuses, with the Fitzpatrick Important Stage (314 seats) and the Unicorn Theatre (120 seats) in Stockbridge, and the Colonial (700 seats) and the Storage efficiency area (versatile seating) in Pittsfield. We spoke lately through electronic mail with creative director, CEO Kate Maguire.

AMERICAN THEATRE: Who based Berkshire Theatre Group, when, and why?

KATE MAGUIRE: Fascinating query. The primary creative director of Berkshire Theatre Pageant was Alexander Kirkland. He opened the doorways of our “Playhouse” almost a century in the past. The theatre was based on the inspiration of the good thespian Eva Le Gallienne. Eva was the chief of the Civic Repertory Firm in NYC and she or he was decided to assist theatres being part of communities across the nation. She visited the Roosevelts typically with hopes of founding a nationwide endowment for the humanities. The NEA wouldn’t be based till 1965, however Le Gallienne inspired a lot of her firm artists to open theatres.

Civic Repertory Firm member Kirkland, with assist from the Stockbridge, Mass. group, helped open the Berkshire Playhouse in 1928. Eva starred within the first manufacturing of A Cradle Music by G. Martinez Sierra (translated by John Garrett Underhill). This could be the primary of many performances by Le Gallienne and the primary creative establishment that might quickly multiply by many, making the Berkshires a cultural vacation spot.

Throughout the Nineteen Fifties a bunch of theatre college students created a second area on the Stockbridge campus, calling it the Unicorn Theatre. In 2010, Berkshire Theatre Pageant merged with the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield to turn into Berkshire Theatre Group. The Colonial had been constructed as a vaudeville home, closed down for 50 years, and reemerged because of the dedicated efforts of involved residents and former First Girl Hillary Clinton, who declared the constructing a Nationwide Treasure. Each the Playhouse in Stockbridge and the Colonial are registered as historic landmarks. All three theatres maintain the spirits of the constructing over the previous century of the regional theatre motion. 

Inform me somewhat bit extra about your self and your background.

I’ve lived and labored within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts my complete life. Born and raised in Lowell, after graduating from Boston School, I carried out in Boston and gained administrative expertise on the Lyric Stage in Boston. From there, I moved to Western Mass., working as an actor and administrator at Shakespeare & Firm in Lenox, Stage West in Springfield, after which lastly got here to Berkshire Theatre Pageant in 1985. My present title is creative director, CEO which after all nonetheless signifies a accountability to each the work on the stage and efforts wanted to assist that work.  

What units BTG aside from different corporations in your area?

We function phases in two distinct communities on two campuses. We oversee three landmark buildings and our theatres maintain the histories of Stockbridge and Pittsfield. We’re the originators of the cultural amenities in our group; in actual fact, we’re older than the Tanglewood Music Pageant. Our accountability to meet the imaginative and prescient of Eva Le Gallienne, who dreamed of bringing theatre to the broadest viewers potential, remains to be on the heart of all we do. To undergo the archives of our theatre is an perception into the artists who’ve developed the American theatre. Due to our historical past, we additionally know we should create the setting for the following era of efficiency artists. Our previous provides us a singular perspective and stage of expertise to know that the humanities enable us all to see what lies within the human coronary heart and to raised perceive the world we presently dwell in. 

Inform me about your favourite theatre establishment aside from your personal, and why you admire it.

I’m not which means to keep away from the query, however the fact is that in these ridiculously troublesome occasions for the humanities, I like anybody standing and persevering with their mission to create and assist artists.

How do you decide the performs you place in your stage?

Affiliate creative director David Auburn is instrumental in bringing new works and introducing administrators to our theatre. There’s a core group of artists who additionally deliver concepts and initiatives to my consideration. The record is lengthy of performs we hope to get carried out, and can solely be added to with time. Equally necessary is to pay shut consideration to our audiences and to concentrate to the waves of cultural and political shifts of the occasions we dwell in. At all times we ensure that all eyes are on the drama on the stage. By that I imply, we should all the time work to supply an area for the artist to do their greatest work. I wish to assume we go right into a venture figuring out what the artist, director, and playwright need to obtain, after which an organization is constructed to assist that imaginative and prescient. And most actually we hope everybody who involves our theatres take pleasure in themselves. The pleasure of going to the theatre is so necessary!

What’s your annual finances, and what number of artists do you utilize every season?

Our finances is roughly $4.8 million and we make use of about 600 artists every season. We not solely produce performs, however we additionally herald comedians, musical performers, and this 12 months, a circus will be part of the lineup.

How has BTG fared because the finish of the COVID lockdown?

We produced by way of all of it. Berkshire Theatre Group has produced yearly since its founding in 1928. In August 2020, we have been the one theatre within the nation given permission to carry out a musical by AEA, SDC, and USA. We offered the Stephen Schwartz musical Godspell beneath a tent on our grounds in Pittsfield, and in December 2020, in opposition to all odds, we produced a manufacturing of Vacation Recollections open air on our property in Stockbridge. Every manufacturing was monumental, and audiences have been so grateful to be within the midst of dwell performances. We have now been lucky to have been supported strongly in our ticket gross sales. Our audiences have come to belief us and depend upon our persevering with. Nonetheless, we’re challenged by dramatically rising prices and in holding our donations at a stage of sustainability. We go ahead, however the occasions are very completely different and troublesome.

How has your theatre responded to requires racial justice and extra equitable working situations which have arisen with new urgency previously few years?

We acknowledged early on that the mannequin of internships that we had was not a good system. We made adjustments within the system a while in the past. We work exhausting to steadiness our finances, and on the identical time acknowledge that the not-for-profit system is constructed on a dependency of donor assist and ticket income and can’t be constructed on the sacrifices of our staff.

Berkshire County as an entire is working to open doorways to assist better variety in our area and should proceed these efforts. My life and my kids’s have been enriched for having labored within the performing arts. I perceive that it’s a part of the legacy of the establishment based by Eva Le Gallienne to make it possible for everybody can profit and we higher our world by opening artistic doorways.

Our theatres have been constructed on grounds as soon as inhabited by the Munsee Tribe of the Mohican Nation. We have now a accountability to acknowledge injustices and to persistently and consciously educate ourselves on higher practices. Fortunately we now have labored and proceed to work with organizations and people who’ve helped to supply us with higher instruments to advertise fairer working situations and study our personal private patterns of conduct for the higher. 

What present are you engaged on now? The rest in your season you’re particularly wanting ahead to?

I’m pulling collectively our season of performs and performances for 2024, and in doing so working with an unimaginable group of artists who educate me day by day on the facility of the humanities. I’m wanting ahead to standing at the back of our theatres watching these artists deliver their work to life and to sensing the transformation of an viewers. I simply love recognizing an viewers coming into our areas. Audiences enter from no matter has been happening of their life and so they depart reworked. There may be actual pleasure in figuring out that our artistic laboratories actually produce change in human conduct and generally change hearts and minds for the higher.  That’s why they arrive to our performing areas, to expertise change.

We simply introduced that our musical in our Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield shall be Mel Brooks’s Younger Frankenstein, directed by Stuart Ross and choreographed by Gerry McIntryre, a tri-production with Bay Avenue Theatre and Geva Theatre Heart. After I say this to individuals, I really like seeing them broadly grin or giggle in response to the title. It’s additionally satisfying to assist administrators like Lizzie Gottleib, Tor Krautter, David Auburn, Kat Yen, Kathy Jo Grover, David Adkins, Isadora Wolfe, and Eric Hill, who will put their distinct marks on a number of of the opposite productions we are going to produce. I additionally stay up for working with Roundabout Theatre to current some readings of latest performs by playwrights they proceed to assist so powerfully. 

What’s the strangest or funniest factor you’ve ever seen or put in your stage?

I’m writing a ebook to be printed after I die—isn’t each creative director? The strangest and funniest actually can’t be spoken about simply but… 

What are you doing while you’re not doing theatre?

I’m spending time with my three kids and their companions, my husband, and my five-year-old granddaughter Olympia and her eight-year-old brother Theo. They every amaze me. 

What does theatre—not simply your theatre, however the American or world theatre—seem like in, say, 20 years?

My mom’s household was from Mani in Greece. My father’s household was Irish. The roots of theatre run deep in these international locations. Twenty years, 200 years, 2000 years—the theatre is all the time recreating itself, it all the time has. The human race will all the time want to assemble to inform our tales. What it seems to be like, I don’t know, however we go on.

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