Williamstown Theatre Festival Wants To Be The Coachella of Theatre

In an article promoted by the theater and originally published by The Berkshire Eagle, Raphael Picciarelli (Managing Director of Strategy and Transformation) shared that they want to "create something similar to a music festival."

Picciarelli  hopes future WTF seasons be made up of a "series of weekends" spread out over the course of the summer.

Each weekend would offer a concentrated variety of programming including productions of classic plays and immersive dance classes. The format is reportedly inspired by California’s Coachella and Chicago’s Lollapalooza.

"Maybe you go for the headliners, but you get to stay all day and experience other sets. The core focus of the Festival will be these condensed weekends that are holistic experiences. Condensing everything gives audiences more opportunity to be curious, because they’re already there, and these things are already happening...my biggest ambition is that folks don’t come for a show. They come for the festival..." said Picciarelli.

For seven decades, the Tony Award-recognized Williamstown Theatre Festival has brought emerging and professional theater artists together in the Berkshires to create a thrilling summer festival of diverse, world premiere plays and musicals, bold new revivals, and a rich array of accompanying cultural events.

Artists are drawn to Williamstown Theatre Festival to make great theater in an environment conducive to artistic risk-taking. Matthew Broderick, Audra McDonald, Dominique Morisseau, Mary-Louise Parker, Susan Stroman, Uma Thurman, and Blair Underwood are just a few of the luminous theater artists who have worked at the Festival. Many others, including Sterling K. Brown, Ty Burrell, Charlie Day, Paul Giamatti, Kathryn Hahn, Allison Janney, Brie Larson, Chris Pine, and George C. Wolfe, began their careers at the Festival.

Productions and artists shaped at the Festival fill theaters in New York City and around the world. Recently, Williamstown Theatre Festival was represented on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and regionally by The Sound Inside, Grand Horizons, The Rose Tattoo, The Visit, Fool for Love, The Elephant Man, Seared, Selling Kabul, Unknown Soldier, the 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning Cost of Living, and Lempicka.

Learn more about Williamstown Theatre Festival at www.wtfestival.org.