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FOR RELEASE ON TUESDAY, JULY 1, PLEASE

TONY AWARD^®-WINNING
WILLIAMSTOWN THEATRE FESTIVAL
ANNOUNCES ADDITIONAL PROGRAMMING
FOR THE UPCOMING SUMMER SEASON (W71)

JENSEN McRAE, ROSTAM, AND DELTA RAE
TO BE PART OF NEW ONE-NIGHT-ONLY VARIETY SERIES,
“LATE AT THE ANNEX”  

WWW.WTFESTIVAL.ORG 

HEADSHOTS CAN BE FOUND HERE

New York, NY (July 1, 2025) – Today, Managing Director, Strategy & Transformation, Raphael Picciarelli and Managing Director, Operations & Advancement, Kit Ingui, announced additional programming for the upcoming Tony Award®-winning theater festival’s 71^st season (W71). The complete Festival takes place from Thursday, July 17 through Sunday, August 3. Weekend passes and single tickets are on sale now at www.wtfestival.org.

The inaugural Creative Collective, a new collaborative leadership model, is led by Tony Award nominee Jeremy O. Harris, with actor, model, and co-founder of the online book club “Library Science,” Kaia Gerber and her co-founder Alyssa Reeder, entrepreneur and producer Alex Stoclet, and dancer and member of American Theatre’s “2023’s 6 to watch,” Christopher Rudd.

W71 is a multi-disciplinary theatrical eruption that investigates and celebrates playwright Tennessee Williams, as well as the spaces he inhabited and inspired. This Festival is not nostalgic, and these artists are not simply heralding this canonical icon. They are diving deep, scrutinizing the conditions that influence human behavior, and asking the question, “who tells our stories and why do they tell them the way that they do?”

Late at The Annex, the new variety series highlighting fresh and exciting voices will feature Jensen McRae (Friday, July 25 at 11pm), a 2025 New York Times Artist On The Rise, Grammy Award nominee Rostam (Friday, August 1 at 11pm), the acclaimed singer, songwriter, producer and founding member of the band Vampire Weekend who has worked with acts like Haim, Charli XCX, and Carly Rae Jepsen, and Delta Rae (Saturday, August 2 at 11pm), the American folk-rock band featuring Ian Hölljes, Eric Hölljes, and Brittany Hölljes. Additional artists for the first and second weekend of Late at The Annex will be announced shortly.

McRae will do a textual deep dive into the lyrics of her fan favorite songs and as-yet-unreleased music. Through line-by-line analysis and probing audience questions, she will shed light on her lore, her process, and her philosophy on songwriting and storytelling more generally.

Producer, songwriter, and founding member of Vampire Weekend, Rostam returns for his first solo performance in over a year, joined by a cello quartet to perform unreleased material and new arrangements of songs spanning his career. The quartet, led by Hamilton Berry and featuring Emily Brausa, Michael Haas, and Dara Hankins, will accompany him in this unique performance. He has been described by Stereogum as one of the greatest pop and indie-rock producers of his generation, having produced for some of the most important artists of the last decade including Frank Ocean, HAIM, Clairo, Solange, Hamilton Leithauser, Maggie Rogers, Charli XCX, Santigold, Carly Rae Jepsen and many others.

Delta Rae will be in Williamstown workshopping a new musical, The Ninth Woman, and will play a one-night-only concert, presented in partnership with Studio 9 a feature of the FreshGrass Institute, as part of W71’s closing weekend.

TICKETING

Patrons who buy a Weekend Pass are guaranteed tickets to eight core projects, and the option to add additional events to their itinerary. Weekend Passes for Williamstown Theatre Festival are on sale now at www.wtfestival.org.

Single tickets for Late at The Annex performances go on sale to the public on Thursday, July 3.

Single tickets for core projects: Camino Real, The Gig: After Moise and the World of Reason, Many Happy Returns, Spirit of the People, Not About Nightingales, The Things Around Us, and Vanessa, as well as readings and The Cabaret benefit concert are currently available at www.wtfestival.org.

ABOUT W71

The complete 2025 Williamstown Theatre Festival will include:

Camino Real (Saturday, July 19–Sunday, August 3 on the MainStage). Obie Award and Lucille Lortel Award-winning theatre and opera director Dustin Wills’ reimagination of the play by Tennessee Williams will star 2024 Golden Globe Award and SAG Award nominee Pamela Anderson as ‘Marguerite,’ Emmy Award winner Nicholas Alexander Chavez as ‘Kilroy,’  Vin Knight as ‘Gutman,’ Obie Award winner April Matthis as ‘Gypsy,’ and Whitney Peak as ‘Esmerelda.’ Wills brings what New York Magazine calls his “mad scientist zeal” back to Williamstown to reimagine this sprawling Williams epic written in the lead up to the McCarthy trials. Camino Real, Williams said, is “…a play that is less written than painted. A play that is painted? Why not! At least I could try. I did. And here it is.” Due to a last-minute scheduling conflict, Bruce McKenzie will replace Tony Danza as ‘Casanova’.

The Camino Real is a dead end, a police state in an imagined Latin-Mediterranean-American country, and an inescapable condition. Characters from history and literature such as Don Quixote, Casanova, and Camille inhabit this phantasmagoric plaza where corruption and alienation have nearly destroyed the human spirit. Enter Kilroy, played by Chavez, a prize-winning boxer and all-American fella with “a heart as big as the head of a baby.” In an ambitious first significant revival since the ‘99 Williamstown production, Camino Real unfolds over a series of sixteen dizzying “blocks” and is a clarion call to the Romantics of the world – drowning in an ocean of cynicism, suspicion, and censorship – to use their indefatigable spirit as a life raft. Also featuring live music composed by Dan Schlosberg. The ensemble features Frankie J. Alvarez, Ato Blankson-Wood, Juanita Cardenas, Cindy De La Cruz, Arya Gaston, Gabriel Gaston, Rob B. Kellogg, Smaranda Luna, Emma Ramos, Marquis Rodriguez, Julian Sanchez, Socorro Santiago, Vicki Shaghoian, Ryan Shinji, Henry Stram, Marlon Vargas, and Jacob Wasson.

Camino Real will feature scenic design by Kate Noll and Dustin Wills and lighting design by Barbara Samuels.

The Gig: After Moise and the World of Reason based on the novel by Tennessee Williams, (Friday, July 18 – Saturday, August 2 at the Peter W. Foote Vietnam Veterans Skating Rink) is conceived, directed, and choreographed by Will Davis with ice choreography by Douglas Webster, and special choreography by U.S. ice dancing champions and two-time Olympic medalists Maia & Alex Shibutani. The cast will feature renowned skaters Danila Berdnik, Dan Donigan, Benjamin Guthrie, Isaac Lindy, and Rohene Ward.

This is Tennessee Williams live on an ice rink—a wholly original, site-specific performance about making a plan and leaving the world of reason. Originally published in 1975, Moise and the World of Reason is one of Tennessee Williams’ later works. The novel centers around an impoverished and quixotic young painter, the narrator, a young man from Thelma, Alabama, who is determined to be a distinguished writer; and Lance, the man whose intensity, strength and sensuality held them all together while he lived.

Late at The Annex (Friday, July 18 – Saturday, August 2 at The Annex). Each weekend features a series of late-night experiences on Friday and Saturday nights at 11pm in the new Festival venue located at 245 State Road, North Adams. Performances are available as part of Weekend Passes and single tickets are also available to the public as of Thursday, July 3. Acts participating this year include: Jensen McRae (Friday, July 25), a 2025 New York Times Artist On The Rise, Grammy Award nominee, Rotsam (Friday, August 1), the acclaimed singer, songwriter, producer and founding member of the band Vampire Weekend who has worked with acts like Haim, Charli XCX, and Carly Rae Jepsen, and Delta Rae (Saturday, August 2), the indie country rock band. Additional artists for the first and second weekend of Late at The Annex will be announced shortly.

Many Happy Returns (Friday, July 18 – Sunday, August 3 at The Annex), the acclaimed dance piece co-created and choreographed by Monica Bill Barnes and co-created and written by Robbie Saenz de Viteri. Performers include Monica Bill Barnes, Flannery Gregg, Chelsea Hecht, Indah Mariana, Mykel Marai Nairne, Christina Robson, and Robbie Saenz de Viteri.

It’s a dance version of a memory play. With movement and language, Barnes and Saenz de Viteri create a shared character, a woman in the middle of her life who moves with total clarity but can’t stop revealing the doubt she’s desperate to dance over. Many Happy Returns is a hilarious, heartwarming look back at who we thought we were and a communal search for solace in who we’ve become.

Not About Nightingales (Thursday, July 17 – Sunday, August 3 on the NikosStage), by Tennessee Williams and directed by Tony Award nominee Robert O’Hara (Williamstown’s A Raisin in the Sun and Slave Play), is a front row seat to America’s prison industrial complex that is too often avoided and denied featuring Brian Geraghty, Emmy Award nominee William Jackson Harper, Elizabeth Lail, and SAG Award winner Chris Messina. The rest of the ensemble will also include Michael Benz, Nick Craven, Skyler Gallun, Ben Getz, Iván Marcel Hernandez, Joe Goldammer, Malik James, Sam James, Dan Katz, Annie MacNamara, David Mattar Merten, and Gabriel Portuondo.

Not About Nightingales will feature costume design by Sophia Choi, scenic design by Diggle, sound design by Palmer Hefferan, and lighting design by Alex Jainchill.

1938. Hitler is invading Austria, Stalin is putting on show trials, America is lynching Black people, thousands are rotting in state prisons, the world is slowly climbing out of the Great Depression, Hollywood is filming The Wizard of Oz and auditioning for Gone with the Wind, all while a 27-year-old Tennessee Williams is pulling all-nighters to finish a blistering homoerotic Prison Drama. He would never live to see a production of this early masterpiece. Not About Nightingales is a front row seat to America’s prison industrial complex whose atrocities are too often avoided and denied. O’Hara will immerse us in this searing testament to what happens when we cage men, remove their humanity, and let them rot while the ‘outside world’ is run by rich, entitled gangsters.

The world premiere of Jeremy O. Harris’ Spirit of the People (Thursday, July 17–Friday, August 1 and the MainStage), “one of the most hotly anticipated events in theater” (GQ), will be directed by Katina Medina Mora. The cast will feature Tony Award nominee Ato Blankson-Wood, Zachary Booth, Tony Award nominee James Cusati-Moyer, Brandon Flynn, Amber Heard, Amandla Jahava, Lío Mehiel, Emma Ramos, Julian Sanchez, and Tonatiuh. Spirit of the People features lighting design by Barbara Samuels and scenic design by Kate Noll.

The Things Around Us (Thursday, July 17 – Friday, August 1 at The Annex), the new solo musical created and performed by Ahamefule J. Oluo and produced by Roya Amirsoleymani.

This narrative stage show is a collection of seemingly unrelated stories and anecdotes that swirl and dance with a live musical score created through looped trumpet, clarinet, and drums. From acclaimed Seattle musician and writer Oluo (Now I’m Fine; Susan at On the Boards), this dark and humorous, uplifting and bleak, deep, and silly work is about trying and failing to find order in chaos.

The “categorically imaginative and radical” (The New Yorker) Heartbeat Opera is creating a brand-new adaptation of Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti‘s Vanessa directed by R.B. Schlather (Thursday, July 17 – Sunday, August 3 at The Annex) for Williamstown this summer. Barber was one of the most celebrated American composers of the 20^th century, and Vanessa was a hit upon arrival at the Metropolitan Opera in 1958 and won the Pulitzer. It could have remained in the canon as one of the great American operas of all time, but its unique brand of gothic creep and fiercely emotional music did not jive with the overly academic tastes of the time, and over the following decades, the piece receded into near-obscurity. The directors of Heartbeat Opera, “an enterprise that has already contributed more to opera’s vitality than most major American opera companies,” (New York Times) have planned a reinvention of this classic, stripping away the gewgaws and doilies of its original imaginings, and allowing the riveting extremes of these palpable characters to break through. Heartbeat’s version pares the work down to five singers, trapped inside their own circumstances. Adapted by Jacob Ashworth, newly arranged by Dan Schlosberg, musical direction by Jacob Ashworth and Dan Schlosberg. Featuring Inna Dukach as ‘Vanessa’, Ori Marcu as ‘Erica’, Joshua Jeremiah as ‘Doctor’, Roy Hage as ‘Anatol’, and Mary Phillips as ‘Baroness’. The team also includes Terese Wadden (Costume Designer), and Peregrine Heard (Dramaturg).

As part of W71, the New Play Reading Series includes White Girls Gang written by Rianna Simons, directed by Gus Heagerty, and featuring Kaia Gerber will take place Tuesday, July 29 at 7:00 PM in the Auditorium at the Clark Art Institute. Additional casting to be announced.

Worms written by Gracie Gardner, directed by Dustin Wills, featuring Susan Sarandon and Kate Walsh, is a Williamstown commission, also part of the New Play Reading Series taking place on Thursday, July 31 at 1:30 PM on The MainStage at ’62 Center. Additional casting to be announced.

VENUES & ADDRESSES

MainStage and NikosStage
’62 Center for Theatre & Dance
1000 Main Street, Williamstown, MA 01267

The Annex
North Adams Gateway Center
245 State Road, North Adams, MA 01247

Peter W. Foote Vietnam Veterans Skating Rink
1267 South Church Street, North Adams, MA 01247

The Clark Art Institute Auditorium
225 South Street, Williamstown, MA 01267

ABOUT WILLIAMSTOWN THEATRE FESTIVAL

After seven decades of helping to shape the American theater, Williamstown Theatre Festival is bringing emerging and professional artists together in the Berkshires to create a thrilling summer festival that expands the expression of theater and its essential role in society. The Festival will continue to produce the world premiere plays and musicals and bold new revivals that it’s come to be known for, while expanding into other forms of theatrical expression that brings many art forms together in exciting and innovative ways.

Williamstown Theatre Festival has always been, and continues to be, a creative hothouse for established and emerging artists and their work. More than 75 productions have transferred from the Festival to other regional theaters, Off-Broadway, and Broadway, with many productions being adapted for television and film. Thousands of actors, writers, designers, directors, and aspiring theater professionals from all fields that have come through the Festival to challenge themselves and their craft have gone on to prominence and recognition on Broadway, in Hollywood and beyond.

Learn more about Williamstown Theatre Festival at www.wtfestival.org.

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