A New Era for The Playhouse
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ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF STAR POWER GIVES THE PLAYHOUSE STAYING POWER
By Laura Mars
Spring 2026
It's 1887. The Stockbridge Casino, designed by architect Stanford White, opens on Main Street. Berkshire elite roam the art gallery, billiard room, and ladies parlor. In 1928, the social club, having outlived its heyday, was sold for literally a dollar and moved board by board on horse-drawn wagons nearly a mile east, to the bottom of Yale Hill.
Renamed The Berkshire Playhouse, it thus began its legacy as a theatrical force for nearly a century, attracting the likes of James Cagney, Jane Wyman, and Katharine Hepburn, all to become household names. Through the years, the stars keep coming: Gene Hackman, Sigourney Weaver,Gilda Radner, Karen Allen, Al Pacino, and so many more.
Today, Berkshire Theater Group (BTG), after closing The Playhouse in 2019, prepares the iconic building for its second debut, having embarked on a renovation that will serve as a cultural cornerstone for Berkshire County. The curtain will rise in 2028 to reveal a theater, museum, immersive exhibits, and community hub, all with 21st century pizzazz. A more fitting 100th anniversary celebration for The Playhouse is hard to imagine.
Leading the renovation effort is Smitty Pignatelli, BTG’s Director of Strategic Initiatives. The former state representative was handpicked by Artistic Director Kate Maguire. “This is an opportunity to take a historic building that was open four months out of the year for almost 100 years and make it into a year-round destination,” says Pignatelli, tapping into the experience in construction he gained prior to his political career. The building has a new
roof, and next steps are insulation and preparation for the new HVAC system. He has been meeting with architects, neighbors, and potential donors, anticipating questions before they’re asked: Why renovate? What will the renovation look like? Why should I support the effort?
To understand why renovating The Playhouse is so important is to know its history and that of the Mission House, which was built in the early 1740s on Prospect Hill for John Sergeant, the first missionary to the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican people. When Mabel Choate, whose family built the Gilded Age mansion Naumkeag as their summer home, bought the Mission House in the 1920s to save it from demolition, she wanted it moved to Main Street to honor the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican people with a museum in a prominent location. This was easier said than done, as the Casino sat on the spot Choate was eyeing for the Mission House. She solved the problem by purchasing the Casino in 1927 and selling it for $1 to financier and artist Walter Leighton Clark, with the stipulation that the building be removed.
“Mabel Choate was an incredible force—truly the stage manager of Stockbridge,” says Maguire. “She oversaw the move of the Mission House to its current location on Main Street and then the relocation of the Stockbridge Casino, recognizing it was no longer serving the town in its original form and saw the potential for something new.
“By bringing together three individuals who understood the vital role the arts and theater play in a community, she helped give birth to what became the Berkshire Theatre Festival.”
In 1928, Clark, sculptor Daniel Chester French who built Chesterwood, studio and home, in 1896, and Dr. Austen Riggs, who founded in 1913 the psychiatric treatment facility in Stockbridge that would become the Austen Riggs Foundation, moved the Casino, and did some remodeling that included a new stage and seating for 450. They renamed it The Berkshire Playhouse and founded Three Arts Society, attracting an unending list of young artists, actors, directors, and playwrights, who today are household names, including Ethel Barrymore, Thornton Wilder, and Montgomery Clift, to name several more. But things were just getting started.
In 1964, The Berkshire Playhouse was recognized as a nonprofit and renamed Berkshire Theater Festival (BTF), with Stockbridge resident and playwright William Gibson its new president and director Arthur Penn, who also lived in Stockbridge, as artistic leader. This era welcomed a star-studded list of actors like Dustin Hoffman and Frank Langella to its stage. Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth was performed in 1966, starring Anne Bancroft. In 1996, Stockbridge’s Unicorn Theater became BTF’s official second stage. In 2010, BTF merged with the 1903 Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield to become Berkshire Theatre Group, where James Taylor and family starred in A Christmas Carol (2012). That same year, BTG opened The Garage in the lobby of The Colonial and operated all four venues—The Playhouse, The Unicorn, Colonial, and Garage—until 2019, when the final performance at The Playhouse was a reprisal of The Skin of Our Teeth.
“The past teaches us to create fresh for the future,” says Pignatelli. “Shame on us if The Playhouse, so rich in history, architecturally and theatrically, gets demolished due to neglect and becomes just another photograph in a book.”
When BTG first shut down The Playhouse, Maguire assumed they would return to it as a conventional theater, which is why they held on to the seats. But neither the Berkshires nor BTG need another traditional theater. The region has more thana dozen live theater spaces, and BTG operates three of them. Maguire began imagining not only theater, but an opportunity to hear the stories of what it means to be in the Berkshires.
“Through thoughtful conversations with artists and a deeper understanding of how the field is evolving, it became clear that creating a flexible, innovative space—one that could serve artists and audiences for the next 100 years—was essential,” says Maguire, noting the extraordinary technical advances in theater. “This approach also allows us to honor what makes the Berkshires such a unique and inspiring place for creative work.”
The reimagined Playhouse sees actors moving about in open, flexible spaces, and projections (digital images and video projected onto screens, surfaces, and actors) as a vital part of the performances. Art installations will be transportive and participatory, responding to visitor movements, recreating the journey of Tibetan Buddhism and refugee experiences. Museum exhibits will comprise curated shows, artifacts, and first-person stories of both iconic artists and residents. Immersive worlds will take visitors into clue-finding sets and thematic tours of New York tenement homes. The Playhouse also will be a welcoming space for the community to gather, create, celebrate, and connect.
“I believe that The Colonial Theatre would be closed today if not for Kate’s leadership,” says Pignatelli. “My experience in helping restore The Playhouse into a world-class year-round venue and investment in our creative economy lays the groundwork for Kate’s vision.”
Maguire’s vision for The Playhouse is also rooted in the past. “I remember in my early years spending weeks in the archives with my gloves on looking at letters about what The Playhouse meant to those who came here,” says Maguire, who has been the artistic director since 1998. “Eugene Ionesco writing a play under the tree on the grounds of The Playhouse. Actress EvaLe Gallienne, the first woman on our stage, writing that ‘theater is about spreading beauty to a community.’ Katharine Hepburn complaining about how miserable she was as an apprentice at The Playhouse because ‘that actress, Jane Wyatt, got the leads, probably because I was too tall.’ Reading about how James Cagney traveled from doing vaudeville at the Colonial in Pittsfield one day to performing in Oh Boy at The Playhouse the next. More recently, when Judd Hirsch came to perform in The Stone Witch in 2016 at 81 years old, he said he was told ‘you haven’t had a career until you’ve performed at The Playhouse in Stockbridge.’ It’s those stories that helped me realize how important The Playhouse is.”
Project curator Fran Rosenfeld, historian and former curator at the Museum of the City of New York, is working on telling stories of the local community through The Playhouse.
“It’s exciting to discover how The Playhouse embodies not only the 100-year story of Berkshire Theater Group,” says Rosenfeld, “but also how the building is profoundly connected to the development of Stockbridge, and the Berkshires as a whole, as a leading cultural and tourist destination over many generations.”
Rosenfeld also considers narratives about the Berkshires that aren’t peaceful. This was Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican homeland for thousands of years. The American Revolution was hard fought here. Residents struggled to get industry, like textile and paper mills, up and running.
“These stories tend to get flattened out over time,” she continues, suggesting that this energy is right under the surface. Could that be part of the creative energy that the Berkshires is known for and part of the reason why The Playhouse is still standing and about to come to life again?
Fundraising for this massive effort is ongoing. In addition to private donations, the town of Stockbridge awarded The Playhouse a grant for a new cupola. For a limited time, a local supporter is offering a matching gift of $25,000. Galas are being planned.
BTG also is welcoming community members to share Playhouse memories and experiences, quotes that will be used in a variety of ways, becoming part of The Playhouse’s legacy.
To donate or submit a quote, go to berkshiretheatregroup.org/savetheplayhouse.
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