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FOR RELEASE ON THURSDAY, JUNE 12, PLEASE

TONY AWARD^®-WINNING
WILLIAMSTOWN THEATRE FESTIVAL
ANNOUNCES ADDITIONAL CASTING, CREATIVE TEAM MEMBERS, AND PROGRAMMING
FOR THE UPCOMING SUMMER SEASON (W71)

“THE GIG: AFTER MOISE AND THE WORLD OF REASON”
BASED ON THE NOVEL BY TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
THE WORLD PREMIERE PERFORMANCE PIECE TAKING PLACE ON AN ICE RINK
TO STAR RENOWNED SKATERS
DANILA BERDNIK, DAN DONIGAN, BENJAMIN GUTHRIE,
ISAAC LINDY, AND ROHENE WARD
AS ADDITIONAL MEMBERS OF THE CREATIVE TEAM ARE ANNOUNCED

NEW PLAY READING SERIES TO INCLUDE

“WHITE GIRLS GANG”
WRITTEN BY RIANNA SIMONS
DIRECTED BY GUS HEAGERTY
STARRING KAIA GERBER
TUESDAY, JULY 29 AT 7 PM IN THE AUDITORIUM AT THE CLARK ART INSTITUTE

“WORMS”
WRITTEN BY GRACIE GARDNER
DIRECTED BY DUSTIN WILLS
STARRING SUSAN SARANDON AND KATE WALSH
THURSDAY, JULY 31 AT 1:30 PM ON THE MAINSTAGE AT ’62 CENTER

WWW.WTFESTIVAL.ORG

HEADSHOTS FOR W71 CAN BE FOUND HERE

New York, NY (June 12, 2025) – Today, Managing Director, Strategy & Transformation, Raphael Picciarelli and Managing Director, Operations & Advancement, Kit Ingui, announced additional casting, creative team members, and 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?”

The world premiere performance piece performed on ice and conceived by director/choreographer Will Davis has been titled The Gig: After Moise and the World of Reason, based on the novel by Tennessee Williams. The complete cast will feature renowned skaters Danila Berdnik, Dan Donigan (a.k.a. Milk from “RuPaul’s Drag Race” Season 6 and All-Stars 3), Canadian elite skater Benjamin Guthrie, Isaac Lindy, and U.S. Nationals qualifier Rohene Ward. The Gig will feature ice choreography by Douglas Webster (Executive and  Artistic Director of Ice Dance International, choreographer for Disney on Ice, Stars on Ice, Holiday on Ice and former Artistic Director of Ice Theatre of New York), and special choreography by U.S. ice dancing champions and two-time Olympic medalists Maia & Alex Shibutani.

The “New Play Reading Series” (formerly called Fridays@3) brings playwrights, directors, and professional actors together for one week of rehearsals and an opportunity for audiences to get closer to the creative process. This year, as part of W71, the series will be presented in partnership with the Clark Art Institute and includes White Girls Gang written by Rianna Simons and directed by Gus Heagerty, featuring Kaia Gerber (Tuesday, July 29 at 7:00 PM in the auditorium at the Clark Art Institute) and WORMS written by Gracie Gardner, directed by Dustin Wills, featuring Susan Sarandon and Kate Walsh, a Williamstown commission (Thursday, July 31 at 1:30 PM on The MainStage at ’62 Center). Additional casting to be announced. Tickets for both readings are $20 and are on sale now.

Past readings have led to full productions at the Festival, on Broadway, and beyond. Most recently, Lempicka, made its debut as a Fridays@3 reading in 2017, premiered at Williamstown in 2018, and took the Broadway stage in 2024. Other notable readings include Selling Kabul, which was a NikosStage production in 2019 and 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist, and Seared, a NikosStage production in 2018 that made its Off-Broadway debut in 2019.

The Festival is also proud to announce this year’s L. Arnold Weissberger Award winner: Cephianne’s Reflection by Mallory Raven-Ellen Backstrom.

Cephianne’s Reflection was among the 6 finalists that were evaluated by judges Jeremy O. Harris, Sara Porkalob, and Kate Whoriskey. The other finalist plays were Ten Grand by Kate Cortesi, This is What the Days Are by Madison Fiedler, The More They Stay by Ricardo Pérez González, Gods Untitled by Dylan Guerra, and Goats & Monkeys by Adam Rapp.

Since 1998, Williamstown Theatre Festival has administered  the L. Arnold Weissberger Award on behalf of Trustee Emeritus Fredda Harris and the Anna L. Weissberger Foundation. Recent past winners include Clarence Coo’s Chapters of a Floating Life, Mike Lew’s Tiny Father, John J. Caswell Jr.’s Wetbrain, Sanaz Toossi’s English, Selina Fillinger’s Cinched/Strapped, Sylvia Khoury’s Selling Kabul, Abe Koogler’s Kill Floor, and Dominique Morisseau’s Paradise Blue. This year marks the end of Williamstown’s partnership on this playwriting award. The award will continue in partnership with Playwrights Horizons, who will announce details for next year’s award soon.

The Festival remains committed to supporting the creative development of new plays and writers. Mallory Raven-Ellen Backstrom will be in residence this summer along with playwright Rianna Simons, musician Ahamefule J. Oluo, and commissioned playwright James Anthony Tyler.

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 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 and readings and several Pop-Up events 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,’ Emmy Award^® and Golden Globe Award^® nominee Tony Danza as ‘Casanova,’ 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.”

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 Gatson, Christopher Geary, Rob B. Kellogg, Florencia Lozano, Smaranda Luna, Emma Ramos, Marquis Rodriguez, Julian Sanchez, Socorro Santiago, Ryan Shinji, Henry Stram, and Marlon Vargas.

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 music experiences. Artist line up and more information to be announced in the coming weeks.

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.

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. Many Happy Returns casting will be announced shortly.

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.

1983. 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, Tony Award nominee James Cusati-Moyer Christopher Geary, Amandla Jahava, Emma Ramos, Julian Sanchez, and Tonatiuh. Spirit of the People features lighting design by Barbara Samuels and scenic design by Kate Noll. Additional casting for Spirit of the People will be announced shortly.

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 at The Clark. 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 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. A complete new website will launch later this month.

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