WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS: Artistic director Mandy Greenfield has announced the Williamstown Theatre Festival’s 2015 Season, the 61st Season for the theatre company and the first under Greenfield’s leadership. The season runs from June 30 to August 23.
“I am beyond excited for the upcoming summer at WTF – I am grateful to each artist who has committed to make bold, innovative work at the Festival this year,” Greenfield said in statement.
The mainstage season begins with a world premiere by the late William Inge, starring Kyra Sedgwick, in her WTF debut. Off the Main Road was, until recently, a lost work among Inge’s canon, found and reintroduced by the Inge Estate in 2008. It tells the story of a woman who, seeking refuge from her retired baseball-player husband, checks into a run-down resort on the outskirts of St. Louis with her 17-year-old daughter. It will be directed by Evan Cabnet and runs June 30–July 19.
Another world premiere is next, this one by Dominique Morisseau. Paradise Blue (July 22–Aug. 2) is about a trumpeter who contemplates selling his once-vibrant jazz club in Detroit’s Blackbottom neighborhood to shake free the demons of his past and better his life. Ruben Santiago-Hudson directs.
Real-life couple Audra McDonald and Will Swenson round out the mainstage season in a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s classic A Moon for the Misbegotten (Aug. 5–23), helmed by Gordon Edelstein and featuring scenic design by Ming Cho Lee.
Meanwhile on the Nikos Stage, the world premiere of Daniel Goldfarb’s Legacy runs July 1–12, featuring Eric Bogosian as a regretful novelist, Jessica Hecht as his questing wife and Halley Feiffer as one of his brilliant grad students, who threatens the equilibrium of their marriage. Directed by Oliver Butler.
Next is the U.S. premiere of Carey Perloff’s Kinship (July 15–25), which stars Cynthia Nixon as a newspaper editor caught between an upstart journalist and her overly protective mother. Jo Bonney directs.
Next is a world premiere musical from songwriter Michael Friedman and playwright Daniel Goldstein, Unknown Soldier (July 30–Aug. 9), about a woman who sets out to understand her past after she discovers an enigmatic photograph of a soldier while cleaning out her deceased grandmother’s home. It will be directed by Trip Cullman.
The Nikos season concludes with two U.S. premiere by British theatermakers, both directed by Lila Neugebauer: Chewing Gum Dreams, a coming-of-age story written and performed by Michaela Coel, and Mike Bartlett’s Intervention, a two-hander about love, alcohol and war that will feature a rotating cast of “world-class actors.”
