and his music always did that for me.”
The next piece she worked on with him was March of the Falsettos. When they were workshopping the musical at Hartford Stage, Testa received an offer for her first Broadway show and was faced with making a choice between sticking with the workshop( which paid $ 75 a week) or performing in her first Broadway show( which paid $ 400 a week).“ It was very painful for me, and it was very painful for Bill,” recalls Testa, who chose the Broadway musical.“ He didn ' t speak to me for a year after that.” They both subsequently realized that her character in In Trousers had no place in March of the Falsettos. A year later, they were friends again.
In 1992, just three weeks after winning two Tony ® Awards for Falsettos, Finn collapsed in midtown Manhattan. He was hospitalized and diagnosed with an Arteriovenous Malformation( AVM), a tangle of blood vessels in his brain. The experience became the inspiration for his 1998 Off Broadway musical A New Brain. Testa, who was at his hospital bedside when he was ill, later played the character of the homeless woman in the original Lincoln Center Theater cast.
Twenty-five years on, Alan Paul at Barrington Stage asked her to play the mother in the 2023 revival of A New Brain on the Boyd-Quinson Stage, in association with Williamstown Theatre Festival. The director was Joe Calarco, and Vadim Feichtner was the musical director.“ I was just proud to be a part of it. I knew Bill ' s mom, and he loved his mother more than anything in the world,” says Testa.“ My hair is very big and curly. She was a very put together woman with blonde hair. So I had this blonde wig with straight hair. It just helped me feel closer to Bill ' s mom, even though I look nothing like her.” The following year, Testa received the 2024 William Finn Award for Excellence in Musical Theatre. The last time she spoke to Finn was on his birthday, February 28, 2025.
“ He wanted to know if I’ d made money on A New Brain. I said that I was making my normal regional theater salary,” she says, laughing. At the end of the conversation, she said,“ Bill, I love you.” He responded,“ Thank you.” Testa laughs again.“ It was typical Bill. He could be a big asshole. He wasn ' t the easiest guy always. But I never doubted his love for me.”
50 // BERKSHIRE MAGAZINE July 2025
Bill Finn with cast members from The Royal Family of Broadway, produced at BSC in 2018.( WAMC, courtesy of Barrington Stage Company)
His students
Niko Tsakalakos first met Finn when he took his class at NYU’ s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program. He was asked by Finn to assist him in the summer between his first and second year at NYU.“ It was just an amazing turning point in my life, for him to invite me to assist him at Barrington Stage’ s Musical Theatre Lab,” Tsakalakos recalls. He drove Finn around and often told him stories about working as a hotel pool boy the previous summer.“ I just had these crazy stories of this largerthan-life world at the Hotel Bel Air with the celebrities and all the interactions I was having,” says Tsakalakos.“ I was just talking about it while I was driving. We stopped at a light once, and Bill turned and said,‘ Niko, that ' s what you should be writing about.’”
Finn encouraged Tsakalakos to tap into his own experiences, to find a voice for a character in a way that was honest. That’ s where Pool Boy emerged. It was developed at the BSC Musical Theatre Lab, followed by a world premiere at Barrington Stage in 2010. That was later followed by Fall Springs, which also was developed in the Musical Theatre Lab and premiered at Barrington Stage in 2019.
“ Being with Bill changed the trajectory of my life,” says Tsakalakos.“ I know that he ' s done that for so many students, artists, composers, actors. Anyone he collaborated with. He was just a force.”
Nathan Tysen first heard Falsettos in 1997, and that’ s when he realized what musical theater could be— personal, quirky, funny, heartfelt and catchy.“ It sounded so fresh and so new,” says Tysen. A New Brain came out while Tysen was in college, and he memorized that score.“ Basically, I knew Bill’ s whole catalogue by the time I went to NYU grad school in 1999.”
In his second year at NYU, the graduate students had to write a musical thesis. The first week, Tysen and Chris Miller pitched two or three different ideas for feedback. Finn didn’ t mince words if he didn’ t think the idea was good, Tysen says.
“‘ DON’ T DO THAT,’ he said.‘ That is a horrible idea. I promise you, come May, you ' re gonna say,‘ Why the fuck did I decide to make this into a musical?’ The people who didn ' t listen to him, he just crossed his arms and said,‘ I told you, it ' s not a good idea. You should have listened.’ So, we kind of always trusted that he was our true north, and we would rewrite when he told us to rewrite.”
Bill reminded his students that if they were going to spend all this time working on a show, they should make sure it was a viable idea and something that somebody would buy a ticket to.
Several years later, Finn asked Miller