Performances are included as part of all weekend passes

Ahamefule J. Oluo

Roya Amirsoleymani

This solo musical and 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 

 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.

"As both a speaker and a musician, Ahamefule J. Oluo specializes in mellow anxiety. It’s a smooth but layered style that makes them highly agreeable to listen to and at the same time unexpectedly moving. The concentrated emotional force lurking in their ease of manner sneaks up on you."

Williamstown Theatre Festival does not typically offer advisories about subject matter, as sensitivities vary from person to person, but for content information about any show, we encourage you to contact the Box Office at 

The Things Around Us

Each weekend features a series of late night experiences. Additional artists and more information to be announced.

 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.

Rostam
With cello quartet
Friday, August 1 11pm



Producer, songwriter, and founding member of Vampire Weekend, 

 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

, 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. This new collaboration is not to be missed.

, will be in Williamstown workshopping a new musical, and will play a one-night-only concert as part of W71’s closing weekend.

Late at The Annex

Tennessee Williams

Dustin Wills

 calls) his “mad scientist zeal” back to Williamstown to reimagine this sprawling 

 epic written in the lead up to the McCarthy trials. 

, 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, 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, 

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.

 is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc. 

This production contains audible gunshots and haze. For a full content disclosure, please contact

Camino Real

Monica Bill Barnes

Robbie Saenz de Viteri

A Monica Bill Barnes & Company Production

It’s a dance version of a memory play. With movement and language, 

 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. 

 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

Jeremy O. Harris

Katina Medina Mora

In “one of the most hotly anticipated events in theatre” (

 returns with his first world premiere after his record-breaking 

Developed in partnership with Works & Process at Guggenheim New York

Upon arrival at the venue, all phones will be secured in Yondr pouches that will be opened at the end of the event. Guests maintain possession of their belongings at all times and can access their phones throughout the event at designated Phone Use Areas in the venue. All phones will be re-secured in Yondr pouches before returning to the event space.

Anyone seen using a non-permitted device during the performance will be escorted out of the venue. Guests are encouraged to bring a credit card for purchases inside the venue. We appreciate your cooperation in creating a phone-free viewing experience.

This production contains nudity and haze. For a full content disclosure, please contact 

Spirit of the People

Samuel Barber

Gian Carlo Menotti

Jacob Ashworth

Dan Schlosberg

Jacob Ashworth and Dan Schlosberg

R. B. Schlather

The "categorically imaginative and radical" (

 for Williamstown this summer. Samuel Barber is one of the most celebrated American composers of the twentieth century, and 

 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," (

) 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, with a new arrangement by Dan Schlosberg.

This is the story of two women, Vanessa and Erika, caught in the central dilemma which faces every human being: whether to fight for one's ideals to the point of shutting oneself off from reality, or compromise with what life has to offer, even lying to oneself for the mere sake of living. Like a sullen Greek chorus, a third woman (the old Grandmother) condemns by her very silence the refusal first of Vanessa, then of Erika, to accept the bitter truth that life offers no solution except its own inherent struggle. When Vanessa, in her final eagerness to embrace life, realizes this truth, it is perhaps too late.

This is a Heartbeat Opera Production co-developed with and presented by Williamstown Theatre Festival

This production uses fog. For a full content disclosure, please contact

Vanessa

Individual tickets are available for purchase by the general public.

Every summer the Williamstown Cabaret has been where the artists of the Festival come together for a casual evening of comedy, musical performances, and surprises. For W71, it comes back in the form of a one-night-only concert, on 

, featuring beloved Festival artists of the past and present.

$500 tickets include a pre- and post-show reception; $150 tickets include a post-show reception.

The Cabaret

Will Davis

Douglas Webster

Maia & Alex Shibutani

“A distinguished failed writer at thirty has suspended the climax as if it were a sentence that he had the audacity not to complete.”

 live on an ice rink—a wholly original, site-specific performance about making a plan and leaving the world of reason. Conceived by Director/Choreographer 

, and featuring special choreography by U.S. Ice Dancing champions and two-time Olympic medalists, 

Note: all audience seating will be on the ice. Please dress warmly as the rink is kept at 45 degrees. For more information or a content disclosure, please contact 

The Gig: After Moise and the World of Reason

Robert O'Hara

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 

 is pulling all-nighters to finish a blistering homoerotic Prison Drama. He would never live to see a production of this early masterpiece. 

 is a front row seat to America’s prison industrial complex whose atrocities are too often avoided and denied. Director 

), 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.

This production contains nudity, audible gunshots, cigarette usage, and haze. For a full content disclosure, please contact

Not About Nightingales

Our reading series, presented in partnership with the 

, brings playwrights, directors, and professional actors together for a 29-hour rehearsal process culminating in a public presentation. The series provides playwrights a process that gives them the essential information they need to continue to develop their new work.

Readings are not included in a Weekend Pass. Single Tickets are $20.

Past readings (formerly called Fridays@3) have led to thrilling new work at the Festival, on Broadway and beyond. Most recently, 

, made its debut as a Fridays@3 reading in 2017, with a world premiere WTF production in 2018, before finally taking the Broadway stage in 2024. Other notable recent Friday@3 readings include 

, part of the 2019 NikosStage Williamstown season and a 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist, and 

, which was part of the 2018 NikosStage season and made its off-Broadway debut in 2019.

Calendar