Williamstown Theatre Festival
| Williamstown Theatre Festival | |
|---|---|
'62 Center for Theatre & Dance
|
|
| Genre | Theatre |
| Frequency | Annual |
| Location(s) |
Williams College Williamstown, Massachusetts |
| Inaugurated | 1954 |
| Website | |
| wtfestival |
|
A winner of a 2002 Tony Award and a 2011 Massachusetts Cultural Council Commonwealth Award, the Williamstown Theatre Festival is a resident on the campus of Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, founded in 1954 by Williams College news director, Ralph Renzi, and drama program chairman, David C. Bryant.
The theatre festival was conceived as a way to use the Adams Memorial Theatre on the Williams campus for a resident summer theatre company. At the request of Renzi and Bryant, established Actress and Broadway Theatre World Award winner Marcia Henderson, who was raised in Williamstown, performed in the first play of the festival. She was the first major celebrity to perform at Williamstown, and many have followed since, including Sigourney Weaver, Gwyneth Paltrow, Christopher Walken, Nathan Lane, Richard Chamberlain, Kate Burton, Olympia Dukakis, Paul Giamatti, Bradley Cooper and Calista Flockhart.
Nikos Psacharopoulos, a professor at Yale Drama School and a co-founder, became the executive artistic director and guided the company for over thirty years. Psacharopoulos made certain WTF would not be a typical summer stock theater by focusing on such international playwrights as Chekhov, George Bernard Shaw, Jean Anouilh, Tennessee Williams, Bertholt Brecht, and Tom Stoppard. He mentored his associates and assistant directors, such as Tom Brennan, Arvin Brown, Keith Fowler, Peter H. Hunt, Paul Weidner, and Austin Pendleton. He attracted well-known actors including E.G. Marshall, Frank Langella, Rosemary Harris, Blythe Danner, and Colleen Dewhurst. Christopher Reeve, once a WTF apprentice and later a frequently-featured actor at the festival, told an interviewer: "By staying here thirty years, Nikos [did] what they couldn't do in Brooklyn or Washington or at Lincoln Center. He has managed to achieve a national theater."
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Wikipedia