In the earliest decades of the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the promotional brochures, programs, and advertising noted its geographic centrality: one hundred fifty miles from Boston and one hundred fifty miles from New York. Seventy years ago, when this theater was a mere dream, who could have envisioned that it would become the nexus for ambitious productions and new plays that would travel from the rolling Berkshire hills to the bright lights of Broadway and every major theater in the United States? Who could know that the Williamstown Theatre Festival would be a place where countless artists, young and old, would refine their craft on the stages of Williams College, as well as in basements and restaurants across town? In the end, the Williamstown Theatre Festival is not simply placed at the intersection of Route 7 and 2, one hundred fifty miles from Boston or New York. The routes that lead from this corner of the Berkshires have, for seven decades, wound their way to stages, classrooms, cinemas, and into the hearts of theater lovers the world over.
Opening on June 28, 1955, the first season was a trial by fire. A company of twenty-six was gathered and ten productions were planned for the ten weeks of the season, beginning with Aurthur Laurents’ drama The Time of the Cuckoo. The theater’s premiere production was led by Marcia Henderson, a star of stage and screen who grew up in the area; her father Jack was on the Board of Trade and ran the Williamstown Co-op. Audience numbers fluctuated throughout the season, but the energy remained high, and quickly, critics began to note an aesthetic of this young theater company: well-directed and lushly designed contemporary classic plays, starring young, capable actors. The Theatre Foundation would close out the 1950s by joining the Actor’s Equity Association, making it a professional theatrical organization, and inaugurating a new apprenticeship program, which welcomed future theatrical luminaries such as Austin Pendleton, Christopher Reeve, and, later, Kate Hudson, Chris Pine, Peter Dinklage, and many, many more.
The Festival’s long-time emphasis on powerful modern theater set it apart from the standard summer stock fare in theaters across the United States and made the theater a magnet for actors who wished to challenge themselves on Chekhov, Moliere, Williams, Brecht, and maybe a musical—all in one season! Endowed by Nikos’ passion for bold performance, the theater’s apprentice program and, later, the Second Company—by Nikos and Steve Lawson—as well as the Free Theater, provided hundreds of green and seasoned actors with multiple stages and spaces to succeed and, sometimes, fail beautifully in front of eager audiences. Generations of actors returned year after year, the likes of Maria Tucci, Olympia Dukakis, James Naughton, David Hyde Pierce, Kate Burton, Dylan Baker, Blythe Danner, Christopher Walken, Michael C. Hall, Gwyneth Paltrow, Audra McDonald, Christopher Fitzgerald, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Becky Ann Baker, Jessica Hecht and many, many more.
Christopher Reeve, who performed in over fifteen productions at WTF once said, “If you’re keen to pursue a livelihood on the stage, somewhere in your past, present, and future is the Williamstown Theatre Festival.”
For those whose dream was not to make their livelihood on the stage, but rather, behind the scenes directing, designing, programming a light board or working in a box office, Williamstown became a locus for on-the-ground experience and education with world-class artists in a professional theatrical organization. Universities across the country encouraged students to put their learning into action by interning or apprenticing at this little theater with a big footprint. Stage designer David Korins, for example, arrived at Williamstown in 1997 as a fresh-faced intern while in his junior year at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In his more than fifteen years at WTF, he developed from intern to design assistant, to director of the design program, to resident designer—designing and building over 100 sets in his years at the Festival. His last WTF set design was in 2012 for Here Lies Love, staged at MASS MoCA. Just four years later, David Korins would be Tony-nominated for his work on a little musical called Hamilton. Korins, alongside numerous theater luminaries—the likes of directors George C. Wolfe and Alex Timbers, author and theater critic Jesse Green, and lighting designer Ken Posner, among countless others—were drawn to the magnetism of great artistic work and the great artistic workers that made the Festival possible. They knew that the roads to and from Williamstown are full of both opportunity and transformation.
Transformation of notable productions is also a hallmark of the Williamstown Theatre Festival, as they moved from our stages to the national stage many times over the Festival’s seven decades. Filmed productions include the 1974 production of Chekhov’s The Seagull, directed by Nikos, which PBS produced for a 1975 broadcast; a 1977 production of Sherlock Holmes directed by Peter Hunt that HBO filmed in 1981; and a 1987 feature film of The Glass Menagerie, directed by Paul Newman, starring much of the cast from the 1985 Nikos-directed production at WTF. Additionally, beginning in 1987, WTF sent nearly twenty productions to the Great White Way—not to mention the many other works that moved to regional theaters as well. Sweet Sue, a romantic comedy by A.R. Gurney, had its world premiere in 1986 on the Williamstown stage, under the direction of John Tillinger and starred Mary Tyler Moore as the titular Susan. It was the first Williamstown production to move to Broadway when it transferred the following season. Beyond excellent productions of the modern classics, the Williamstown Theatre Festival had long also been developing new plays like Sweet Sue, sometimes through staged readings, which Nikos began programming early in the life of the Festival, and other times through commissioned works with budding playwrights.
The latter decades of the Festival are marked by an explosion of new play and musical development, giving opportunity and rise to prominent playwrights in the American theater. From A.R. Gurney, David Mamet, Terrence McNally, Theresa Rebeck, Sanaz Toossi, Bess Wohl, and Martyna Majok—to name a select few—WTF has become a haven for playwrights to stay in-residence, stage a public reading, workshop their play with a creative team, and then, maybe, open a world premiere production. In 2020, for example, young playwright Sanaz Toossi won WTF’s L. Arnold Weissberger Award for her play English, which would go on to win the 2023 Pulitzer Prize. That same year, WTF premiered her new play Wish You Were Here as part of its innovative Audible Season. In 2023, Sanaz then came back to Williamstown as an artist-in-residence. As evidenced by many world premieres, vibrant Fridays@3 readings, WTF’s commissioning programs, and the new play awards, WTF audiences have long welcomed new, innovative, and experimental works, making the Festival a thrilling place for playwrights to return to again and again. The spirit of experimentation that fuels the contemporary Festival gave birth to the much smaller theater those seventy years ago. In the long life of this storied theater, that spirit has seen WTF undertake a myriad of artistic risks—from the failed attempt at being a repertory company for one season (1964), to the establishment of the Second Company (1972) and the Free Theater (1987), to the two-night epic production of The Greeks (1981), a full season recorded on Audible (2020), and the walk and drive-through immersive production of ALIEN/NATION (2021). WTF has long been on the forefront of the American regional theater, drawing renowned artists, plays, and productions like a lighthouse to this fertile, sleepy town and sending them out to enrich the world beyond these hills. Impossible as it may be to know the shape of the Williamstown Theatre Festival for the next seventy years, should the past be our guide, it will be an adventure, full of risk and reward, driving the field of theater forward from its intersection of Route 7 and 2 out into the world.
