giving back
A New Era for
THE PLAYHOUSE
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF STAR POWER GIVES THE PLAYHOUSE STAYING POWER
It’ s 1887. The Stockbridge Casino, designed by architect Stanford White, opens on Main Street. Berkshire elite roam the art gallery, billiard room, and ladies parlor. In 1928, the social club, having outlived its heyday, was sold for literally a dollar and moved board by board on horse-drawn wagons nearly a mile east, to the bottom of Yale Hill.
Renamed The Berkshire Playhouse, it thus began its legacy as a theatrical force for nearly a century, attracting the likes of James Cagney, Jane Wyman, and Katharine Hepburn, all to become household names. Through the years, the stars keep coming: Gene Hackman, Sigourney Weaver, Gilda Radner, Karen Allen, Al Pacino, and so many more.
Today, Berkshire Theater Group( BTG), after closing The Playhouse in 2019, prepares the iconic building for its second debut, having embarked on a renovation that will serve as a cultural cornerstone for Berkshire County. The curtain will rise in 2028 to reveal a theater, museum, immersive exhibits, and community hub, all with 21st century pizzazz. A more fitting 100th anniversary celebration for The Playhouse is hard to imagine.
Leading the renovation effort is Smitty Pignatelli, BTG’ s Director of Strategic Initiatives. The former state representative was handpicked by Artistic Director Kate Maguire.“ This is an opportunity to take a historic building that was open four months out of the year for almost 100 years and make it into a year-round destination,” says Pignatelli, tapping into the experience in construction he gained prior to his political career. The building has a new roof, and next steps are insulation and preparation for the new HVAC system. He has been meeting with architects, neighbors, and potential donors, anticipating questions before they’ re asked: Why renovate? What will the renovation look like? Why should I support the effort?
To understand why renovating The Playhouse is so important is to know its history and that of the Mission House, which was built in the early 1740s on Prospect Hill for John Sergeant, the first missionary to the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican people. When Mabel Choate, whose family built the Gilded Age mansion Naumkeag as their summer home, bought the Mission House in the 1920s to save it from demolition, she wanted it moved to Main Street to honor the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican people with a museum in a prominent location. This was easier said than done, as the Casino sat on the spot Choate was eyeing for the Mission House. She solved the problem by purchasing the Casino in 1927 and selling it for $ 1 to financier and artist Walter Leighton Clark, with the stipulation that the building be removed.
“ Mabel Choate was an incredible force— truly the stage manager of Stockbridge,” says Maguire.“ She oversaw the move of the Mission House to its current location on Main Street and then the relocation of the Stockbridge Casino, recognizing it was no longer serving the town in its original form and saw the potential for something new.
“ By bringing together three individuals who understood the vital role the arts and theater play in a community, she helped give birth to what became the Berkshire Theatre Festival.”
In 1928, Clark, sculptor Daniel Chester French who built Chesterwood, studio and home, in 1896, and Dr. Austen Riggs, who founded in 1913 the psychiatric treatment facility in Stockbridge that would become the Austen Riggs Foundation, moved the Casino, and did some remodeling that included a new stage and seating for 450. They renamed it The Berkshire Playhouse and founded Three Arts Society, attracting an unending list of young artists, actors, directors, and playwrights, who today are household names, including Ethel Barrymore, Thornton Wilder, and Montgomery Clift, to name several more. But things were just getting started.
In 1964, The Berkshire Playhouse was recognized as a nonprofit and renamed Berkshire Theater Festival( BTF), with Stockbridge resident and playwright William Gibson its new president and director Arthur Penn, who also lived in Stockbridge, as artistic leader. This era welcomed a star-studded list of actors like Dustin Hoffman and Frank Langella to its stage. Thornton Wilder’ s The Skin of Our Teeth was performed in 1966, starring Anne Bancroft. In 1996, Stockbridge’ s Unicorn Theater became BTF’ s official second stage. In 2010, BTF merged with the 1903 Colonial Theatre in Pittsfield to become Berkshire Theatre Group, where James Taylor and family starred in A Christmas Carol( 2012). That same year, BTG opened The Garage in the lobby of The Colonial and operated all four venues— The Playhouse, The Unicorn, Colonial, and Garage— until 2019, when the final performance at The Playhouse was a reprisal of The Skin of Our Teeth.
90 // BERKSHIRE MAGAZINE Spring 2026