Interview: Julianne Boyd of Barrington Stage Company Bids Farewell

After 28 Seasons Julianne Boyd, co-founder and Artistic Director at Barrington Stage Company, passed a brightly burning torch and retired at the end of the 2022 season. Some in the inner circles have suggested that Boyd has a reputation for being "tough", "demanding", and prone to "micro-management"; also, "indefatigable". Berkshire Region Contributor, Marc Savitt, sat down with Boyd to gather some information and insight into Boyd, her experiences, and her undeniable impact on the state of the arts industry and community in the region.

BWW: Is there a particular motivation behind the decision to retire now?

Boyd: I know that I can retire because the theater is in the black. And that's important. The theater is healthy financially. One thing I think an artistic director can't or shouldn't do is retire when you're in the red, because then that new artistic director is trying to make up. You know, you could imagine what that person has to do. And I think we're in really good financial shape. Our reputation is wonderful, and I think it's time for a younger person to come in because we have it all here. So, the thing they can do is build.

BWW: So, like Mary Tyler Moore, Ellen, and Carol Burnett - it's better to leave when you're at the top?

Boyd: Yes, yes. Exactly right. That's why. I'm sure that people like us. Not that the inner workings of the community would be surprised, but I think the majority of theaters operate in the red on a consistent basis. I'm. I don't know. I'm guessing many do. We certainly had our years ending in the red. There are so many pressures on theaters right now, or on our theater. The wonderful thing is that it's not a financial pressure. There are other pressures like trying to cope with Covid.

BWW: The Berkshires region was fortunate to have had theatres, including BSC, that were able to continue performances during the pandemic. Can you help us understand the challenges related to Covid?

Boyd: We're not so worried about the audience, you know. We haven't had any, nor has anyone had, problems with people catching Covid via the audience. It's more the backstage crew, the actors, keeping everybody healthy. The thing is, we know what they do when they're in rehearsal. We don't know what people are doing, when not, in rehearsal or not on the job.

You know, although a little bit more, because people come into town and are housed by the company. And it's a little bit more of a controlled environment, I guess. We have an artistic bubble, that encompasses everyone in the shows and those of us who go into the rehearsal room. It could be a marketing person who takes notes, it could be the general manager who's checking on the Covid tests. Everyone gets tested three times a week and they're in a bubble. People outside of the bubble are not allowed in the room. And when we go to the theater, everyone is in that bubble so that the lighting designers and the assistants, they all test three times a week. And we'll see. We'll see. And by the way, if you kiss on the stage, if two actors kiss, they get tested every day.

BWW: We have been told that you had a full career as a schoolteacher. Can you tell us a little about your past, or life before BSC?

Boyd: I only taught for two years. I majored in both education and theater in college. I remember my father saying to me, you know, you should become a teacher because if your husband dies and you have children, you'll be able to be with them in the summer. I'm like, what? What? Dad? I'm not married. I'm not even thinking... What do you mean by my husband dies? Well, it could happen... My father was a school principal, my mother taught in a parochial school, so I had this Catholic background, and they were teachers. I didn't know any women directors and I wanted to become a director. I thought. OK, then I'll direct in college. So, my passion for theater was a wait, and the teaching thing was just to keep food on the table.

When I got out of college, my husband had just graduated from dental school. It was during the Vietnam War, and they said, if you don't volunteer, you're going to be drafted and you could be a dentist in Vietnam. So, he, well, everyone at Columbia, they all, volunteered, and we got stationed in Biloxi, Mississippi. At which time I taught at Golf Park, College for girls.

I also directed in this little theater in Biloxi. I did the Crucible, and I had the nerve to cast Tituba, the Caribbean maid, black. Half the theater left, which I thought was great because I loved hassling people, but the other half were...you know, and this was in 1968. That was right after the civil rights workers were killed. Mississippi was an unbelievably hostile place. I learned really to respect a lot of people there. There were people who were very liberal, people who fought quietly. There were people for McGovern who couldn't put McGovern stickers on their cars. But it was an education, and it was a great beginning of sorts to directing. I directed in college, but directing professionals and semiprofessionals was great. I remember doing A Streetcar Named Desire and Crucible. I also had my first child there.

When we came back, I never thought I would get a job. But I wanted to get an advanced degree, so I got a masters. Then I started working on my doctorate at City University of New York, and I loved it. I was never challenged in college, and I realized that I had to apply myself. I learned a lot in my doctoral program. I had to do a dissertation and they asked me not to do it on like don't do it on Williams, Eugene O'Neil, or Miller. Please find another subject. My husband and I had just taken a medevac flight. One of those planes that was going over to pick up the boys in Vietnam. We got left off in the Philippines. We hopped to Hong Kong, and then we went to Japan. I saw Puppet theater, and I saw the Kabuki, and I fell in love with Japanese theater. It was so theatrical, so much more theatrical than anything that I was seeing in New York at the time. So, when they said, what do you want to do for dissertation? I said Japanese theater. At this point, I had two children, and I decided to put it aside and really try to get a job in the off-off Broadway theater.

My college drama professor asked, what are you doing with your life? You're like all over the place and I said I want to be a director and I don't know any women directors. I'm trying to get a foothold at this Classic Stage Company, but I think I'm going to have to teach in college. She said, well, you know how you become a director? When I said no, she said, you say I am a director and then, you find a project that no one has but you. Then you own the project. She said theater is a business. She's very dramatic. But it made sense, and I was feeling sorry for myself, maybe thinking like, oh, woe is me, I'm a woman and I can't get a job, but I knew I had to activate myself. So, I did, and I and so, I was. I was reading plays with Manhattan Theatre Club, but I directed these off-off Broadway shows. A couple of them at CSC repertory. One got reviewed in the Village Voice. It was encouraging. It was good.

BWW: You and the company have become well known for musicals.

So, I kept on going and musicals were becoming really popular. And, this was when I went from being a bit beatnik to a hippie, you know. I found this archival recording of shuffle along, the first black musical to play Broadway with music by Eubie Blake. I listened to the score. You know the rest, right? I loved it and said maybe I could do it. A Musical revue on Eubie Blake. I took it to Manhattan Theatre Club where I was a Reader and I said I think this would make a great cabaret and they go great idea. Can you wait till next year because we already have one scheduled, the music of Fats Waller. I didn't want to wait. So, I went to another Theater Off Park. And they said, oh, that would be great for Black History Month. Which is kind of terrible when you think that you can only do black plays in Black History Month... But at least I got it, right? So, I did it with four people. I did the music from shuffle along and the Times came and loved it and. It was just great fun. And I was at the time, the only woman directing on Broadway. That was the beginning of it. The first money, the first money I ever made was when I directed on Broadway. And I was able to do Eubie around the country. I did several productions of it. And then I also did, well, this just a few years later. So that was in 1978-79-80. And then I did A MY NAME IS ALICE in '83. And that was really exciting. 'cause I was doing something meaningful. doing something about women. And it was funny. It was showing women in a sense of humor. It was very, very exciting. So, I did shows in New York. Off-off Broadway and so forth and then. I started working.

BWW: Help us understand then, your move to The Berkshires.

When my youngest, Emily was born, my son was 11 and my daughter was 15. By the time she went to nursery school, my oldest daughter was in college. I just didn't want to travel. I wanted to be with her. Someone told me there's an opening for a job at the Berkshire Theatre Festival. That's how I got there. And by that time, I was also President of the Union, The Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. So, I had a good sense of budgets and contracts and all of that. And, I thought, oh good, only be in the summer. It'll be three months and Emily can go to camp up there. And then we can rent a house and the older kids will visit when they can. I realized what a wonderful thing it would be to do what so many people wanted - year-round theater or theater in the fall in the spring. When I started here in the 90s things restarted the third week of June and you ended before Labor Day and that was it. People say, why can't you do it in May or in October? So, I did a Christmas show. It was wonderful to connect with people outside of the season. They so appreciated it.

I knew the Berkshire community, and I knew the people and I had an idea what they wanted. The two years spent at BTF was great training. I got to meet so many people.

So, in 1995, we started the theater and we really wanted to be in Great Barrington. That's why we called it Barrington Stage. But there was no space and so we went down to meet with every school. We went with Southern Berkshire School District and their most wonderful Superintendent, Tom Consolati. He thought it was a great idea to rent space in the summer. I asked why he was so open? I was just so surprised. He said, "You know what? Everyone in this community pays taxes, but not everybody has kids. They should be able to come to the school and share in what's in the school and see what's in the school. We could do this arts program. This would be great. I said great and he said the other thing I would love is I'd love kids 13 and younger to come in for free. And I said, OK, but I don't want to be Camp Barrington if they come with a parent, one parent for two kids. And he said, OK, we made a quick deal. We were there for 11 years.

The main stage was too big at 500 seats and 26-rows. Impossible because you couldn't hear a thing. They had no real sound equipment. It was not conducive, wasn't good for the human voice. They had two cafeterias. One cafeteria became our stage two, and the other, became our youth theater. So, we started SPELLING BEE in the cafeteria. It takes place in a gym, so it wasn't very far away, you know?

In '97 we did Cabaret, which was a big hit and it moved to Boston to the Hasty Pudding Theater and that's the point when my board, which was very small at the time, said, we knew. You had a chance once you got that recognition. Which was great.

It was joyful. It was hard work, but it was joyful. By the time we came up here, SPELLING BEE had already been a hit. People knew who we were. We couldn't hide, you know, we were out in full, full, you know, sight of everyone, which is great. We developed a bigger audience. Pittsfield's been great. Pittsfield has been really, really welcoming. We love being part of the community, particularly the more diverse community. And it's it's just been totally joyful. And so now that's sort of the trajectory, that's the history.

BWW: Let's talk more about SPELLING BEE?

Cabaret gave us statewide recognition. Spelling Bee gave us wow.

We had done FALSETTOS. At that time, it was a little more progressive than our audience was, but the music was so great. Rob Ruggiero got ahold of Bill (Flynn) somehow, who was renting a house nearby. He came to see a rehearsal and never left; you know. He loved it he came back to see the performance many times and we became friends, being acquaintances and then the next year he called me and was working with Chip Zion to develop a one man show he's doing. I said great, we did it. We really became friends then. Two years afterwards, I said, hey, we're just getting our season ready. Do you have anything that might be right for us? He said, you know, I just wrote 2 1/2 songs of the musical about a spelling bee, and I have a tape of it. Complete kismet. Unbelievable. No way. And I said, OK, let me come over to your place right now. We both live on the Upper West Side. He came over, he had it on a VHS. I watched this adorable little thing called crepuscule at the time and he played the songs, I said. I love this. I knew right away. He said, "well, can I come up and work on it"? This was in November, maybe October, November

It was really an associate, Donna Harrell, who I really knew, would be able to handle the whole process. I said let me work on it and so we worked on that. They would come up in February and I would be gone for the first two weeks in February and then I would be back. So would be two weeks without me and then two weeks with me. So he came up with his band and people. I wasn't here at the beginning. He was in the middle of one of the worst snowstorms. Bill says it was like the Shining. I was living in an apartment then in Great Barrington. We rented the apartment above, made for people. And Bill stayed in the apartment above me, and I would hear him when I was there writing these songs and you hear his very deep voice. I can hear it. It was great fun. So, we did it. We rehearsed it for three weeks. We played it for a weekend of performances. From the first moment it was funny, the audience just laughed from almost the very beginning, and never stopped. By the end of the first performance, we knew it was a hit. Yeah. So, we performed that weekend. They went back into rehearsal, played another weekend, and I said, OK, I'll put it in the schedule for the summer. We would have these limos coming up and people would wonder, where are they going to this little school? And they would get out and they would go into this cafeteria, it was... unbelievable. It was just unbelievably exciting to have started it. Which was some of being in the right place at the right time.

So, I was wondering whether we would be a one hit theater. The following year, I decided to do Follies. We got Larry Teeter in for a choreographer, and it was a gigantic hit. I don't mean just a small hit. Again, every seat was sold out. Stephen Sondheim came. He said, Oh my God, I wish James Golden was alive to see it. It got these fabulous reviews and then we were assured. We were there, were going to be there for the long haul

BWW: It sounds as if you're saying the adage that it's far more important who you know, as opposed to what you know.

BOYD: You've got to know how to joke with all these people. The personalities are humongous. And so, no, it's not who you know. I mean, I don't think it's who you know. Actually, I think it's what you know because you have to put the pieces together. You have to know not to do spelling bee on the main stage. You have to know to do it in a cafeteria. When I do a new work on the mainstage, the expectations are greater than when I do it on the Second Stage. And people sort of know it's in development, you know, or that it's the first time. So, I I think. It's a little of both, but I think you can know all the artists in the world and still you won't have hits. I work really closely with the playwrights to get their work ready. Ask some questions, what they're trying to do. Is it clear? That's the joy of it. Working with playwrights on new plays, is so exciting. It just is. See, you take it from A to B to C is is kind of great. So that's what I meant: it is about having a critical eye. It's knowing how to cultivate, how to nurture, how to work with the delicate personalities that creatives are.

When we were doing FREUD'S LAST SESSION, I didn't know it would be a hit. I knew that it was a really wonderful discussion between CS Lewis and Sigmund Freud. But would our audience want to sit there? We were known as the theater that does musicals, not the theater that does these strong plays that we're doing now on stage two. And I said, Mark, I'll tell you what, I'm going to do it, but we'll do it for two weeks. I knew to do it, but I wasn't sure that we had an audience for it. So sometimes you sort of hedge your bets, you take the risk, but you qualify it. So we did it. It was a gigantic hit. Then, the play that was going to run right after it, we couldn't make an agreement on the rights. We just couldn't agree with these young artists. So, we said, you know what? This isn't for this year and we ran FREUD'S for two more weeks, so we ran it for a month. We brought it back in the fall. When the producer wanted to bring it into New York the next year, she said, "would you bring it back for two more weeks"? Could you help us build the set? I said yeah, so we helped her build this set and we played it. We played that altogether for 10 weeks. It's because we had noise. So, I learned a lot from our audience, including that we had a serious audience. Now, I didn't know that before, so the audience tells us a lot, too. And it's also just to take the chance for the play but hedge your bets a little bit. Like don't run it for a month if you're not sure, run it for a little less.

BWW: if I'm summing it up right, you started with musicals more out of necessity.

BOYD: Exactly, it's true. We have learned that the most people for any show, is a musical. You're getting a lot of people in your theater. You can then upsell for the rest of the season. You also have that money that helps you get through the season. So, the musical became something that we loved doing. There were a couple of times...we did AMERICAN SON first and PIRATES of PENZANCE second. John Randle wasn't available until the second slot. And I thought, well, we will do. American son on the mainstage. OK. No one knew it. It was brand new, and I just took the chance. I said it's a really good play, had a great cast for it. Even before I had the cast, I planned to have it on the mainstage. It just seemed to be, you know, police brutality and what happens to black kids seem to be the subject. I had done a reading of it the year before and people loved it.

I really wanted to get a sense of the community. And I think the community has come along with us. It's been so exciting. Like when I was doing the CHINESE LADY, I'm saying i just want to introduce you to a world you don't know. This is the first female Chinese immigrant. We are introducing them to worlds they don't know.

BWW: The theatre seems to have a solid, core audience of older folks that are loyal and supportive. What is happening towards developing a following for the future?

That's a big question. Every theater in this country is worried about how the cultivating younger audience, nobody has found the secret. If they did, we would all be copying it. Do you know what I mean? When you look at New York, all of the subscribers are old. All audiences look alike. No matter where we go, they look alike. So, I don't know the answer to that right now. You know, we tried for a long time to develop the audience for like 18 to 35. We did free tickets like pay what you can. We did parties afterwards and they come for the free stuff, they come for the parties, but we haven't developed a returning audience. And we're also trying to develop a diverse audience as well. I don't have the answer. I think that since COVID, more young people have moved up here year round. A lot of people are moving out of the city. There's so few houses available. So, we have to find a way. I mean, one of the things we do is we have to find the opinion leaders of people that age. We have to ask them to get people into the theater. We have to offer discount tickets. So, there's lots of things we know to do. And sometimes we have to change the programming, you know, and I think that that's something that if I were going to be here another couple of years, I would definitely be changing the program. I'm hoping somebody comes in and changes the programming a little bit. I don't know what that means, but maybe a play that would appeal to younger people or another way to do it is like with the cabarets to get funkier. We feel that we're making some progress, but we have to realize also that there is a lot of additional income given the influx of younger people to the area. So, we have to find ways to get younger people in the audience. We're trying really hard with AIN'T MISBEHAVIN. One of the things that we've done is we've done a lot of serious plays with black themes and one of the reasons I want to do AIN'T it's a celebration of black culture. So, I think that that's one of the things we feel strongly about. It is an ongoing journey that every theater is going through. That is the main topic, that's the main property developing a younger audience and it may be 45 to 60 and then going down and we all started you know 21 to 35 or something. Certainly, the student matinees help. You know, we do the student matinees in the fall. We have all kinds of specials. You know there's a price for 35 and under. You're 5 to 17, it's $25.00, but we have got to keep on working on it.

BWW: We know that you're tight on time, but I think I have to know. What's your thing with Sondheim?

Boyd: I think he's just brilliant. I think he's so witty. I don't know anyone like him. Many years ago, people thought that he wrote unemotional songs they were very wrong.

Boyd had this to say about passing the torch to Alan Paul who recently took over as Artistic Director at Barrington Stage Company:

"I am pleased and delighted with the choice of Alan Paul to lead BSC. He has a history of bold and inventive work in new musicals and classics, both with the Shakespeare Theatre Company and at prestigious theatres around the country. Moreover, we connected artistically from the moment I met him," said Julianne Boyd. "I am so proud of the work we've done at BSC in close to three decades, but it is time for someone to lead the theatre in exciting new directions, both on our stages and in our community. Alan is the ideal person to be Barrington Stage's new artistic leader."