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

Performances are included as part of all weekend passes.

Individual tickets may become available closer to the summer season. Stay tuned. 

Each weekend features a series of late night experiences. Artist line up and more information to be announced.

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. 

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 

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

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, 

See you on the ice. Tickets for our Community Skate are on sale and include skate rentals, pizza, and ice time.


Sunday, June 22 2:30–4:30pm
The Rink, 1267 South Church Street, North Adams, MA

Join us for an afternoon of ice skating, pizza, and fun for all ages. Whether you're a seasoned skater or stepping onto the ice for the first time, it's the perfect way to cool off and connect with friends and neighbors. 

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.

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.