Nathan Tysen and Chris Miller sit with mentor Bill Finn in 2006. Opposite, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee world premiere was at Barrington Stage in 2004.( Barrington Stage)
They worked on it for a couple of weeks and then did a weekend of performances. They worked on it again and did another weekend of performances.
“ Bill was sitting next to me and he kept saying,‘ I don ' t know if it ' s going to work. I don ' t know if it ' s going to work,’” says Boyd.“ I said,’ It ' s going to work. I ' m telling you, it ' s funny.’ The audience started laughing from the very beginning, and they didn ' t stop.”
BSC was able to get the underwriting to do the production that summer from a friend of Finn’ s, David Stone. He said he would give the money in exchange for the rights to take it to Broadway, if it worked. In July 2004, six months after the winter workshop, they did the musical in Mount Everett High School’ s cafeteria.
“ The funny thing was to see all these New York producers in limos pull up in front of the school, not knowing where to go,” recalls Boyd.“ We told them,‘ Here ' s the entrance to the cafeteria.’” Second Stage then presented it and brought in Lapine to do a little more development. It immediately moved to Broadway. This was all within the span of a year and a half.
“ What Boyd and Finn did pretty spectacularly is they created an audience that wanted to see the first version of something,”
says Paul.“ When I talk to people, there is clearly a great sense of pride that they were at the cafeteria for Spelling Bee.”
The Berkshires became quite the perfect setting for Finn. He bought a Victorian house nicknamed“ Wasabi Gables” located across the street from Boyd’ s house and within a mile of Barrington Stage’ s Boyd-Quinson Theater and St. Germain Stage.( Finn was known to call out to Boyd from his home and invite himself over for breakfast on her porch.)
Barrington was not only a place to develop his musicals; it was also a space to mentor young writers and have workshops. The Musical Theatre Lab started ambitiously, with three projects a summer in addition to the theater company’ s summer season. They quickly learned that not everybody was like Finn, so they pared the program down to develop just one musical a year. Although the score had to be ready, there was bound to be rewrites and other work to do.“ It gave writers the first scaffold in a professional theater,” says Boyd,“ and they were able to take the giant step after that. Bill was a very exciting person to be with. He had this belief in the excellence of musical theater in this country. He believed these young writers were extremely talented, and there
54 // BERKSHIRE MAGAZINE Holiday August July 2025 2025 2023