WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS.: Williamstown Theatre Festival has announced its 2020 summer season, featuring three mainstage productions and four world premieres on the Nikos Stage.
“I can’t imagine a more dazzling, dynamic, provocative, and powerful combination of theatrical talent than the artists who will gather in the summer of 2020 in Williamstown to make a season of work,” artistic director Mandy Greenfield said in a statement. “Especially in a year when Americans will be asked to cast a vote for the future of our country, I am grateful to our brave artists for helping us to explore who we are, who we can be, and who we want to be, ahead.”
The season will open on the mainstage with Tennessee Williams’s classic A Streetcar Named Desire (June 30-July 19). Six-time Tony Award winner Audra McDonald will star as Blanche DuBois in this production directed by Robert O’Hara, with Carla Gugino as Stella and Bobby Cannavale as Stanley.
Next on the mainstage will be Leslye Headland‘s Cult of Love (July 22-Aug. 2), a co-world premiere with IAMA Theatre Company. Trip Cullman will direct this play, which takes a look at a secular family thrown into disarray by its devout daughter’s evangelicalism.
Closing out the mainstage season will be Photograph 51 (Aug. 6-23), by Anna Ziegler, which honors the work and contribution of Rosalind Franklin as she closes in on a discovery around the DNA molecule. Five-time Tony Award winner Susan Stroman will direct.
Over on the Nikos Stage, the season will open with the world premiere of Sanaz Toossi’s Wish You Were Here (July 1-12). Directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch, the play follows friends as they live through the impact of the Iranian revolution.
Next up will be the world premiere of Chonburi International Hotel & Butterfly Club (July 15-25), by Shakina Nayfack. Nayfack stars in her play about a transgender woman finding suprising sisterhood at a hotel in Thailand as she prepares for gender confirmation surgery. Laura Savia will direct.
Following will be Row (July 30-Aug. 9), a world premiere musical with book by Daniel Goldstein, music and lyrics by Dawn Landes, and inspired by A Pearl in the Storm by Tori Murden McClure. The story follows Tori, who wants to become the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic. Tyne Rafaeli will direct.
The Nikos Stage season will conclude with Animals (Aug. 12-23), a world premiere by Stacy Osei-Kuffour. This comedy looks at an evening thrown off when Henry spontaneously proposes to Lydia minutes before their dinner guests arrive. Whitney White will direct.
Williamstown Theatre Festival, founded in 1955, brings directors, designers, playwrights, and performers to the Berkshires each summer to develop new works and produce classic plays.
