Two boys sit on a fire escape together, tracing stars in the city sky.
They are brothers, and they have lost their father — but now the older brother is a memory, and his younger brother and his mother are facing his loss. Myles and Gideon came to a Berkshire stage in the world premiere of Harrison David Rivers’ When Storms Are Born at Williamstown Theatre Festival.

Theaters are thriving in the Berkshires. Some have brought nationally known playwrights and actors for more than 60 years, and today we have an expanding body of work on college stages and in repertory companies. They foster new work, and they take risks. Plays emerge here before they open Off Broadway. Musicals revive and move on to New York. And Puck calls to Oberon from the branch of a tree in Edith Wharton’s garden on a real midsummer night.

Young actors and interns gather here from across the world. Obie awardwinning veteran actors explore new work with old friends. Playwrights come for residencies in mountain cabins and coffee shops. And some have gone on to win the Pulitzer prize.

Theater in the Berkshires

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Barrington Stage

Barrington Stage Company

Barrington Stage Company has been known for 25 years for re-imagining lavish musicals and taking on deep and timely challenges in its theaters. The company fills two stages in Pittsfield with concerts and performances from June to October and a festival of short plays in the winter.

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Emma Rothenberg-Ware / Berkshire Theatre Group

Berkshire Theatre Group

With classics like Fiorello and contemporary work, Berkshire Theatre Group merges two historic theaters — the one of the county’s oldest continuously running performance companies, the Berkshire Theatre Festival in Stockbridge, and the Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield, built in 1903 and re-opened in 2006.

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Nile Scott Studios / Shakespeare & Company

Shakespeare & Company

In 1978, a company of young actors settled in Lenox in a Gilded Age mansion that had run to seed. They lived and performed there together as a close-knit ensemble under the artistic eye of Tina Packer. In those relaxed times they could perform A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the […]

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Williamstown Theatre Festival

Williamstown Theatre Festival

On these stages, actors and writers can take risks. A new musical can ache for a Polish woman who escapes Russia, between a World War and a revolution, and comes to Paris with little but a skill with paint and determination to rebuild.

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Photo by Pete Wise

The Foundry

The Foundry in West Stockbridge is a new center for performing and visual arts, with a flexible gallery space and a black box theater for staged readings and open mics.

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Sarah Kenyon / Courtesy of The Mount

The Mount

Edith Wharton, the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, wrote many of her best-known novels in this house, in the 10 years she lived in Lenox — from The House of Mirth to Ethan Frome. Her house is now a museum, a center of writing, music and performance, landscape and gardens, dedicated to keeping her spirit alive.

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Nikki Giovanni / MCLA

MCLA

National and international figures come to visit the students at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts in North Adams, ranked in the top 10 public colleges in U.S. News and World Report and appears in U.S. News’ list of Top National Liberal Arts colleges.

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Cello / Cody Molica

Egremont Barn

The old barn at the Egremont Village Inn gives refuge on a windy night. Tables gather around an informal stage with a piano. And concerts, comedy and karaoke have been drawing a community here at the Egremont Barn for pub comfort food and music.

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Dada Masilo as Giselle / Photo by Kevin Parry

Williams ’62 Center

Williams College renovated a brick-and-column theatre into the ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance, a 21st-century performance space, with four stages and high-end sound and video. In the fall and spring, national and international performers appear here along with student groups, and in summer it is the home of the Williamstown Theatre Festival.

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