and then he would write the melody, just the notes, like A, B, whatever, and they would go off in all directions on the page. It looked like madness. And then when he sang it, it was kind of madness. But then it would eventually hit the page, and then a great singer comes and does it, and you ' re like,‘ Oh, wow, that ' s the greatest song I ' ve ever heard!’”
Feichtner was one of the lucky handful who would write Finn’ s music down on paper, along with Michael Starobin, Jason Robert Brown, and Carmel Dean.“ My phone would ring. He would say,‘ Vadim, you’ ve got to come over. Hurry! You’ ve got to come over!’ I ' d run over with a tape recorder, and he would sit and play it a bunch of times. And then I’ d get it on paper.”
Barrington Stage’ s past and present artistic directors
In 2002, Barrington Stage Company’ s season included Falsettos. Feichtner was the musical director for the production and was holding rehearsals in the cafeteria at Mount Everett High School. Finn— who was unfamiliar with BSC at the time— called and asked if it was good. Feichtner assured him that it was. When the director, Robert Giroux, caught wind that Finn and his partner were renting a house a half hour away, he invited him to a rehearsal.“ The first act of Falsettos is so experimental,” says Feichtner.“ He was really jazzed that Barrington got it right.”
“ I joke that Bill came to rehearsal, and he never left,” says Boyd.“ He loved what we were doing, and he kept on coming back.”
The next summer, Boyd asked Finn what projects he had going on. He said his good friend Chip Zien was working on a one-person show entitled, Death in Ashtabula. Finn asked for a space to work on it and then a test audience. Boyd made the space, and they held two readings that year.
That fall, Boyd called Finn again and asked if he had anything in the works.“ He said,‘ Yes, I am. I happen to be working on something about a spelling bee,’ and he gave me the background,”
says Boyd. He said he had already written a few songs, and she said she’ d love to hear them and to make a date.“ He goes,‘ Well, how about right now?’” They both had places on the Upper West Side, so she told him to come over.“ He played the two and a half songs for me, and I just knew it was going to be a hit.”
Without hesitation, Boyd agreed to his request for a developmental workshop.“ Oftentimes in theater, you have to make quick decisions. If somebody like Bill offers you something, you can’ t wait two and a half weeks and think about it.” She asked if $ 20,000 would be enough. He said,“ Yes.” The following week, Finn called and said he needed a bit more money for a musical arranger. They settled on a number, and Boyd called a donor who agreed to support the musical’ s development. So, a group of young artists from New York came to the Berkshires in the dead of winter to begin work on it, including Finn’ s former NYU student Rachel Sheinkin, who wrote the book, and Feichtner as the musical director.
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52 // BERKSHIRE MAGAZINE July 2025