When I was hired to help reimagine Williamstown Theater Festival this year, more than one person told me: You only got this job because the institution was hanging by a thread. They were probably right.
Williamstown is one of the most storied summer theaters in America. Founded in 1954 and led by the director Nikos Psacharopoulos for its first three decades, it became known as a regular summer home for theatrical luminaries including Christopher Reeve, Viola Davis, Austin Pendleton, Audra McDonald, Gwyneth Paltrow and so many others. Generations of the world’s most influential actors, directors, designers, playwrights, administrators and craftspeople have passed through. But approaching its 71st season, it was also, I felt, a little musty: a place synonymous with 20th-century theater clinging to a model that no longer fit the world around it.
I’m in my early 30s. I didn’t get an M.F.A. that would normally credential me to run a theater. I didn’t come up in my career through other elite institutions. I’ve taken a winding path — from working with playwrights as a creative producer to consulting with corporate leaders looking for a new purpose — that makes both complete sense and no sense at all. When I took this job, it almost felt as though the board had handed me the keys to a vintage car and said: Take it for a ride, kid.
This is where that ride took us: Rather than continuing to behave like a traditional summer stock theater that produces no more than two shows at a time, my team and I — including Kit Ingui, who leads alongside me as managing director of operations and advancement, and the playwright and producer Jeremy O. Harris, whom I recruited as our first lead guest curator — created a new structure that leans into the “festival” part of our name. A staff of more than 100 put up eight shows at once, with nearly 100 performances by more than 130 artists over three weeks in four venues. It was a spectacle that created an energy and buzz that brought a small rural Berkshires town to life in surprising fashion. A Tennessee Williams novel interpreted as an ice show? Check. Pamela Anderson, Amber Heard, William Jackson Harper, even Kaia Gerber onstage and then wandering the quaint streets? Check. Late-night romps at the Purple Pub, the one bar in town open late, where artists and audiences talk shop? Check.
Some critics called it over the top. We took that as a compliment.
We weren’t chasing hype for its own sake. We were trying to spark the feeling that draws people to Burning Man or the World Cup: the thrill of witnessing something unrepeatable. In an age where screen time keeps us isolated, that kind of shared live experience has become rare and valuable. Theater is by definition one of them. You just have to get people there.
Our over-the-top approach wasn’t born out of whimsy. It was survival.
For years, Williamstown was a machine. It ran on the assumption that a solid seasonal audience would return year after year for something familiar: a mix of exciting stars and upstart theater makers doing a certain kind of traditional play. Risks were taken in casting choices — Bradley Cooper in “The Elephant Man” — or new voices — Martyna Majok’s “Cost of Living” which went on to win a Pulitzer Prize — not in remixing the overall festival experience.
For decades, the festival relied heavily on interns or apprentices who were either unpaid or paid to be there — a system that kept costs low and output high, but seemed to exploit the very people it was supposed to nurture. When those practices were rightfully challenged, the economics collapsed. Add a pandemic, rising costs and a shifting audience, and we were forced to confront a choice: limp along until we faded away or try something completely different.
Some of our problems, like our dependence on inexperienced labor and venues we don’t own, were unique to us. Many are symptoms of a larger failure in the nonprofit arts model — a structure built on exclusivity and outdated economic assumptions. It was designed for a different world and an audience that is now dwindling.
As an outsider, I wasn’t steeped in the traditions that needed dismantling, and I didn’t come in with a mandate to preserve the institution’s past glory. That gave us permission to ask questions: What if we didn’t limit where and how theater could show up physically? How can we make Williamstown more welcoming for people who have never set foot here before? I sought out collaborators who push boundaries by default, such as Mr. Harris.
Not everything went entirely smoothly. Our team was overworked and underresourced, and I struggled to balance the demands of our ambition with the reality of how many hours there are in a day. Week one came and technology broke down; performances ran late; audiences were upset. There were nights I walked home convinced I was the most unpopular person in Williamstown. And maybe at times I was.
We bet the house and took some big, calculated risks, hoping they would pay off. Many, I would argue, did. We fell short of our revenue needs, but we doubled our audience. Forty percent were first timers from across the country and around the world. We showed up in Vogue, on TikTok and in cultural conversations far from the Berkshires. And the work itself — from a bizarrely surrealist, little-known Tennessee Williams play to experimental late-night performances — was bold and varied enough that no two people could agree on what the best show was. Some left enamored, others in tears, others debating what they’d just seen over dinner. Some hated parts of it. That was the point: to create an experience that stirred emotion, provoked reaction and demanded conversation.
Why should anyone outside of theater care? Because this is what generational change looks like. Younger people are finally the adults in the room, inheriting the leadership of companies, nonprofits and cultural organizations — sometimes willingly, often out of necessity — and asked to make them work in a world that looks nothing like the one they were built for.
The handoff of leadership is rarely easy. The old guard fears losing what they built. In my case, I had to grapple with gripes that I’m only interested in chasing “likes” and youth when really, I’m just doing my part to keep the lights on. It’s tempting to see these moments as the end of one era and the beginning of another. In reality, they’re messy, prolonged and often tricky. They’re also the only way forward.
We didn’t get everything right this summer. But we proved that a 71-year-old theater festival could feel alive again. Theater is an art form as old as the concept of democracy. It can also be viral and provocative. We’re not here to keep the car in the garage until it rusts. We’re here to take the keys, put it in gear and see where else it can go.
Raphael Picciarelli is the managing director of strategy and transformation at Williamstown Theater Festival.
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