10 Minutes with... David Auburn

May/June 2026

Read Berkshire Magazine's May/June 2026 Issue.

For David Auburn, the Berkshires is more than a summer destination—it is part of a long creative relationship that has deepened over decades. Best known as the Pulitzer Prize– and Tony® Award–winning playwright of Proof, Auburn has become a vital artistic force at Berkshire Theatre Group, where he serves as Associate Artistic Director and has directed a wide range of productions over the years. This season, his presence is especially notable: he directs Abi Morgan’s Lovesong at The Unicorn Theatre (July 22–August 23), while BTG also stages Auburn’s play Summer, 1976 (October 1–31). In our conversation, Auburn reflects on his early connection to the Berkshires, the unique appetite of local audiences, the theatrical magic of Lovesong, the personal memories that informed Summer, 1976, and what it means to revisit Proof a quarter- century after its arrival on Broadway (this time, directed by Thomas Kail and co-produced by President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama!).

You’ve been a longtime artistic presence at Berkshire Theatre Group (BTG) and now serve as BTG’s Associate Artistic Director. What first drew you to the Berkshires, and what has kept you creating here over the years?

It goes back for me to 1994, I think. My very first professional reading of a play was done at

the Berkshire Theatre Festival, as it was then called, and that was the first time I’d ever come to the Berkshires. It was sort of a coming out. It was really my first professional experience in the theater. Then, a number of years later—maybe 10 or 12 years later—a friend who was going to be in a play in the Berkshires asked me to think about directing it and introduced me to Kate Maguire. I came and directed that play, which was called Sick. Ever since then, with a few exceptions, nearly every summer I’ve done a show at BTG. Then about six or seven years ago, Kate asked me to take on a larger role in helping plan the seasons, bring people into the orbit of the theater company, and think about the future of the theater. So, I feel very connected to the Berkshires. For many of those years, whenI was directing at BTG, my kids were small, and they would come up and we would go to Camp Halfmoon and have these wonderful summers. It was a big part of our lives. And then we have this other family connection to it, which is my wife’s father grew up in Pittsfield, so that whole side of her family are Berkshire natives.

As Associate Artistic Director, how do you approach planning a season?

A lot of it is just being in contact with a large family of artists who’ve worked with the theater or who we have some association with. Actors bring us ideas for plays they’d like to perform in, directors with plays they want to direct, writers who are working on new material. We keep an eye on what’s happening regionally and in New York and think about what things might appeal to our audiences in the Berkshires. We try to take in as much as we can and present as wide a range of work as we can on our stages.

In a regional theater ecosystem like the Berkshires—with such an intellectually engaged and loyal audience—do you find that you’re able to take greater creative risks?

Very much so. The Berkshires are unique in being not just a vacation destination for many people, but also a haven for the arts. So, we have the incredible luxury of our audiences being people who are, in a way, self- selected. They live there, or have second homes there, or spend vacation time there partially BECAUSE they want access to the arts. And we’ve found that they respond to a wide variety of things. Sometimes when you say “summer theater,” people assume that means musicals or lighter entertainment, and that’s a component for sure. Some nights you want to go out and have that experience. But there’s also a real hunger for material that’s more challenging and a hunger for artistic risk-taking. We’ve never had the experience of programming something that was a little edgier, more difficult, or demanded more of the audience—and having them not respond. In fact, sometimes those are the things people lean into most enthusiastically. So, we feel very lucky to get to program for this community.

Let’s talk about Lovesong. What drew you to Lovesong as a director?

Lovesong was brought to us by Karen Allen, who had seen it in the UK and really responded to it. As soon as we all read it, we felt the same thing she did, which was that this was an immensely moving and very theatrical work. It’s a story of a couple, basically, and we’re meeting them at two different stages of life. There’s the couple in their 70s, perhaps toward the end of life, and then younger versions of themselves. Those four people—four versions of these two people—interact with one another over the course of the evening in very unexpected and somewhat magical ways. We get a sense of what their whole lives have been together, and there’s a powerful, slightly spooky, but also magical sense of not just the older couple looking back on their younger selves and trying to understand what formed them, but maybe the younger versions getting a glimpse into their own futures and what awaits them. So, it’s the kind of thing only theater can do. It all unfolds in 90 minutes, and it’s lyrical, funny, and heartbreaking. It’s a really wonderful play—sort of a perfect Berkshire Theatre Group play. I was very excited both by the possibilities of what we could do with the performances and as a theatrical experience, because there are magic tricks built into the play in the way people appear and disappear and transform and change, and I think all that will be really fun for the audience.

Karen Allen is such a beloved presence in this region, and the cast also includes Rebecca Brooksher, Shawn Fagan, and David Garrison. What excites you about this ensemble?

I’ve known Karen for a pretty long time, and we’ve interacted and have mutual friends, but this will be the first time we’ve actually done a show together, so I’m very excited. Rebecca Brooksher and Shawn Fagan are BTG regulars whom I’ve worked with very closely over many productions, and then there’s David Garrison, whose workI’ve seen and admired over many years but never gotten to work with before. So, it’s quite a group.

Switching gears, let’s discuss Summer, 1976.

The play was developed and produced at Manhattan Theatre Club in New York and then produced on Broadway. Kate Maguire came to the opening and saw the play and said, “We have to do this.” So, here we are.

The play centers on an unexpected friendship between two women. Was it inspired by women in your life or by a specific personal experience?

It’s not autobiographical—nothing in the play is directly drawn from something that happened in my life—but the world of the play comes from my memories of being a kid in Ohio in the ’70s. There are lots and lots of details and pieces and jokes and memories that are repurposed in the play. Some of it draws on my memories of my mom and her friends in the 1970s—things they were going through, thingsI saw and experienced from the side. So, it draws on my own childhood a bit, but it’s also an imagined story. The characters were created for this play, and they’re people who are in a moment of social change and, not unlike Lovesong in some ways, looking back on that moment and trying to understand what it meant to them.

Why do you think audiences will connect with Summer, 1976 right now?

There is a resonance with the Bicentennial in the play, and it becomes a metaphor for some of what the characters are going through. They’re interrogating their own independence, trying to figure out where they stand. There’s also a kind of celebration of the mood of the country that I remember from 1976, and I think the contrast between that and now is moving and interesting. So, there’s a timeliness because of that anniversary, but I also think there’s a universality to it. Even if you weren’t alive in ’76, the play is about friendship. We all have friendships that can be pivotal and change our lives in certain moments and then can slip away, or we slip away from them. The play tries to investigate that, and from what people have said to me, that experience is pretty close to universal. It’s also funny. I think it’s a good summer play.

Let’s chat about spring 2026 and the return of Proof to Broadway, this time starring Don Cheadle and Ayo Edibiri. I was living in New York when Proof came out originally, and it was impossible to miss how big it was. What did that experience feel like as a playwright?

It was incredibly exciting and exhilarating. One of the experiences that really made me feel like I was in a new world was getting to meet Arthur Miller—standing and talking with him at a party and shaking his hand—which was not something I ever thought would happen to me. I had wanted to be a playwright, and I was hoping I could make some kind of life in the theater. I wasn’t quite sure how, and I wasn’t quite sure what kind of life that would be. But the experience of that play hitting the way it did was the realization that yes, this could happen—that I could spend at least a portion of my life this way, and I was going to have these opportunities. I felt both exhilarated by that and a bit daunted by it, because I also felt the responsibility of it. I was given this gift of success, and I realized I’d better do something with it.

What is it like revisiting a play you wrote 25 years ago? Are you making any changes to the script?

It’s a thorny set of questions, and I’m still kind of wrestling with it. I don’t think you can ever really preserve something. It’s always going to change, because it’s a different group of people doing it, and also because the world has changed. You’ll apprehend it differently. That’s part of what’s good about reviving plays. I haven’t changed much of the writing. That didn’t feel like a good idea. Whatever I now perceive as flaws or things I could improve, it doesn’t make much sense to go back into the script in a big way just because I’m a different person. If I want to show them who I am now, I can show them a more recent play. This is a snapshot of where I was in 2000, and that’s sort of the way it should remain. But the actors have to make it new. They have to reinvent it. They have to find and present what seems interesting and special and troublesome and all those things to them. So, I can stand back and watch them do that, and I’ll be really eager to see what they bring to it.

What else are you working on now?

I have a new play that I’m just doing first readings of and working on with Manhattan Theatre Club, which has been a really great home for me. I hope people can see it in a year, or however long it takes. The working title is The Harbor Master. I don’t want to say too much about what it’s about, but it’s a contemporary drama about families. I’ve also written a screenplay based on a book I read and really loved called American Gun, which is an exploration of the history of the AR-15 rifle and everything that it’s done to shape modern American life. The film explores the subject from a lot of different angles, and I’m working on trying to get somebody to make it.

Last question: Do you have a favorite play?

There are many on my list of all-time favorites. If I had to pick one play, maybe I’d pick Three Sisters. And I bet if you asked a lot of playwrights who their favorite playwright is, they would say Chekhov. Three Sisters is the one I would love to do a production of sometime. Maybe I’d pick Henry IV, Part One also, so those two.

--Dr. Joshua Sherman