Barrington Stage Company, which has a beautifully renovated 520-seat theater (with great leg room) in downtown Pittsfield, has finally found a semi-permanent home for its Stage II productions. BSC has signed a five year-lease for the VFW Hall on Linden Street and invested $20,000 to turn it into what BSC artistic director Julianne Boyd calls "my dream Stage II space for us" with 125 seats. Boyd has managed to put on first rate theater in unlikely spots over the years: In 2004, she produced The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee in the cafeteria of the Mount Everett Regional School in Sheffield, and for the last two summers she has presented new musicals in the cinder-block basement of the Pittsfield Athenaeum. The first production at the new space will be I Am My Own Wife—the Pulitzer=Prize winning play about an East German transvestite who eludes the Nazis—BSC will continue its long-standing policy of offering reduced-price tickets ($15 or $20) for the first two previews of every show (For I Am My Own Wife, they are May 21 - 22.) A new innovation this year is one "Pay What You Can" performance for audiences under 35 (with a $5 minimum.) "We really want to attract new audiences and make sure theater is accessible to everyone." says Boyd. Barrington Stage Company30 Union Street;413.236.8888
