Barrington Stage Company Founder & Artistic Director Julianne Boyd to Retire

Julianne Boyd, who founded Barrington Stage Company in 1995 and has served as its Artistic Director since then, has announced she will retire next fall. Boyd plans to split her time between Pittsfield and New York going forward with the hopes of both continuing to direct and to spend more time with her seven grandchildren. 

From humble beginnings renting space at a high school in Sheffield, Massachusetts, the theater company now operates its own five buildings in the Berkshires and has gone on to have productions like The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, On the Town and American Son transfer to Broadway. Last weekend, BSC wrapped a presentation of the musical comedy Mr. Saturday Night, starring Billy Crystal.

Last year, Boyd helmed an outdoor production of Harry Clarke during the pandemic. “I’ve been thinking about retiring for a few years, but I couldn’t do it during COVID,” she told The Times.

In an interview on Broadway.com's #LiveAtFive with Broadway.com Managing Editor Beth Stevens (who served as BSC's Publicity Director in the early years of the company), Boyd shared that she had begun doing theater "probably around 4th grade." She also discussed her mission for BSC to serve the community of Pittsfield. “Pittsfield doesn’t have a firm foundation, because GE was there up to the late 1980s, and they left and took 13,000 jobs with them," she said. "The community collapsed, so we came in and said ‘How can we build it up again?’ And now we bring 60,000 people into town.”

The New York Times reports that BSC will conduct a search for her replacement.