Under Daigneault's leadership, SpeakEasy spoke to, and for, many

Boston Globe

20-06-2025

Last year, Daigneault, now 60,
Daigneault has both witnessed and helped to bring about the growth of a robust midsize theater scene. But as he leaves, he's worried about the precarious financial situation midsize theater companies find themselves in due to the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors. (Watertown-based New Repertory Theatre closed two years ago.)
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'Post-COVID has been the hardest,' said Daigneault. 'Audiences got in the habit of staying home, so they're not going out anymore. Or they're older and still afraid of the health risks. It's been much more of a struggle to sustain ourselves since we've gotten back from COVID.'
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'The funding community in this city needs to step up and value the art,' he said. 'A $100,000 grant to a midsize theater company is transformative.' He added: 'The midsize theaters need to band together to find ways to bring new audiences to the theater. It's a challenge that we are all facing, so we should get together to figure out how to solve this.'
He spoke by phone from the home in Connecticut that he and his husband, the Rt. Rev. Jeffrey W. Mello, bought when Mello was named Bishop Diocesan of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut several years ago.
Daigneault's modus operandi at SpeakEasy was a blend of vision and pragmatism. Whether it was a drama, a comedy, a musical, or a combination thereof, he displayed a gift for finding directors, actors, and designers who matched the material.
Daigneault with "An American Daughter" playwright Wendy Wasserstein, left, who visited SpeakEasy in October 1998 during the show's run, which Melinda Lopez, right, directed.
Courtesy
SpeakEasy staged contemporary works that varied in style and subject matter, but had in common a certain polish and vitality, and, sometimes, the ability to start conversations. A 2002 production of 'Bat Boy: The Musical,' about a half-bat, half-boy who falls in love with a girl in a small town in West Virginia, generated so much buzz in Boston that SpeakEasy brought it back for a second run in January 2003, and then for a third run in April 2003.
From the start, Daigneault envisioned SpeakEasy and other midsize and small companies as an antidote to what he calls 'museum theater,' in which 'you're watching the show as if it's in a kind of display case, and you're not feeling a connection with what's going on onstage.'
With that in mind, Daigneault kept an eye peeled for shows first produced on Broadway, such as
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Karen MacDonald and Paul Daigneault at rehearsals for "Pru Payne" in October of 2024.
Nile Scott Studios
What animated him for more than three decades, Daigneault said, was the chance to 'mak[e] art to create community,' telling the stories of 'people who are othered or disenfranchised' while not being 'so didactic and preachy that they're not entertaining.' He points to SpeakEasy's January co-production with Front Porch, directed by Simmons, of
free of charge, to 'solve racism.'
'It was super-entertaining, but it also punched you in the gut,' Daigneault said.
'I've never been a warrior,' he said. 'But I've been a warrior through the art that I produced. I've never had a formula. Just trying to listen to my gut.'
He grew up in Marlborough and Sandwich, graduated from Boston College in 1987, and then spent several years in New York City, where he struggled to land directing jobs. 'I got frustrated, and said 'Forget it, I'm going to go back to Boston and start my own theater company,'' he said.
That's what he proceeded to do, along with several friends, including actress Kerry Dowling. Brainstorming names during an apple-picking excursion, they came up with
a name drawn from the Prohibition era.
'It was the idea that a speakeasy is where you needed to know the password,' said Daigneault. 'It was underground. That it was cool to be there, that whole idea. The name is saying something.'
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The company's first production was a musical about the turbulent teenage years titled 'Is There Life After High School?' SpeakEasy established a niche for itself that was summed up in the tagline: 'Staging Boston Premieres.' But it was a challenge. In those early years, the actors were paid a small stipend, and Daigneault was not paid at all.
'I had no business experience,' Daigneault said. 'I didn't know how to raise money. I didn't know how to budget. I was learning all of these things as I was going along. We started off really grass-roots, really doing shows that I wanted to direct. Over time, it morphed into what we know today.'
'At first, it was really about us young artists getting a chance to do our work,' he added. 'As far as theater goes, Boston was known as an out-of-town [Broadway] tryout place, and mostly commercial touring productions. I just felt there was a hole here of contemporary shows that were a mirror of our society.'
Paul Daignault leads an audience talkback with Richard Kramer and the cast of SpeakEasy Stage Company's production of Kramer's "Theater District" in October 2005.
Craig Bailey/Perspective Photo
A turning point for SpeakEasy, in Daigneault's view, was the 1995 production of Paul Rudnick's 'Jeffrey,' a comedy about a gay man who swears off sex in the middle of the AIDS epidemic, but finds that vow difficult to fulfill. 'Jeffrey' drew more media attention than SpeakEasy had previously enjoyed.
Since then Daigneault has consistently made space on SpeakEasy's stages for stories of gay life, such as
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'The biggest change is that there's a community of theaters and artists,' Daigneault said. 'I can see my favorite actors at SpeakEasy and then I can see them at the Lyric and at Greater Boston Stage Company, all in one season. Sometimes there's real competition in terms of licensing the shows or getting the actors that you want. But we've been able to foster excellence because excellent artists have chosen to live and work here.'
He's been one of them. Now he's starting a new journey. Literally. Daigneault has visited 35 of America's 63 national parks. '28 to go!' as he put it in an email. And he plans to continue teaching musical theater at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.
But he's also looking forward to the most protracted period of inaction and relaxation he's ever had.
'It's time,' Daigneault said. 'I could do rehearsals for the rest of my life. I love it, love it, love it. But it starts to wear on you, the funding [challenges], the day-to day.'
'I wanted to make sure that the people who are at SpeakEasy are finding joy in it — much like I did in 1992 — and can take the company to a whole new level.'
Don Aucoin can be reached at