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Boston Globe

Jeremy O. Harris leads a Tennessee Williams-focused season at Williamstown

The festival, which once stretched across two months, will now unfold in a three-week furnace-blast of activity Bringing Harris onboard was a no-brainer for Raphael Picciarelli, the festival's managing director of strategy and transformation. 'Jeremy was at the top of my list,' he says. 'He has his finger on a pulse in a way that connects people to the work he's doing.' Advertisement The focus on Tennessee Williams felt natural, Harris says. He, too, is a queer southern writer, and he's long felt a kinship with the playwright. He also liked the synergy of focusing on Tennessee Williams at Williamstown . As Harris began planning, he discovered a letter Williams wrote to a friend in the 1950s in which he talked about building a new theater that would give him the space to 'experiment and clarify,' and the idea resonated powerfully. 'In this moment when commerciality is at the core [of theater making], it's taking us away from the beauty of actually doing the work, of finding out what else we want our voice to be,' Harris says. 'The desire to experiment can often reap a lot of amazing rewards for people who are also trying to ask questions about society at large, and that's what I think Williamstown should be doing.' Out of crisis came reflection and then rebirth. For decades, unpaid interns and apprentices worked brutally long hours in sometimes dangerous conditions at the festival. In 2021, 'I would name that moment as a really pivotal inflection point,' Picciarelli says. 'And the beautiful result is that we had the opportunity to actually reenvision and rethink what the institution could be.' Advertisement The team landed on a guest curation model, drawing from the inspiration of European theater festivals, film festivals, and even museums, 'where you have a cohort of people thinking about the programming,' says Picciarelli. The plan is to rotate in a new creative director every few years, supported by Harris viewed European theater and arts gatherings like They hope to position Williamstown as 'a destination that's immersive, that's curated, that's experiential, that's an event,' Picciarelli says. 'We were inspired by what those [festivals] do to create community and to create this immersive experience.' On the Main Stage, Williams's luridly lyrical epic, think he really wanted to do a big swing in a way that was more [Federico Garcia] Lorca than Arthur Miller,' Harris says. 'He was really punished by the critics, and I think it never got a fair shake.' Advertisement O'Hara, who directed Harris's 'Slave Play,' says he was drawn to 'Nightingales' because 'there's all this sexuality and sensuality bubbling underneath' the brutal conditions inside the prison. 'There's all sorts of ticking time bombs inside this pressure cooker,' he says. The spark for group of queer vacationers intersect with native Mexican women making specialized mezcal. 'It's about gentrification and immigration. I've gotten to interrogate the time I spent there. … What does it mean to visit a land that is not your own, what are your responsibilities, and what does it mean to be a traveler of privilege?,' asks Harris. The show's Mexican director, Katina Medina Mora, says, 'It's a play about grief and belonging and trauma. A lot of people want to go to these places to heal, but what comes with your healing? I can also come with destruction and disrespect.' This year's festival also moves beyond the Williams campus to a new venue in North Adams called the Annex, as well as the Vietnam Veterans Ice Skating Rink in North Adams, for Advertisement At the Annex, audiences will be able to catch Heartbeat Opera's new adaptation of Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti's This year's programming, O'Hara says, 'is so outrageous that it sort of matches Tennessee Williams and his outrageousness. This is a place to be ambitious, and that's what Jeremy is known for. He's known for his ambition and for swinging large. So I'm excited about the possibilities.' WILLIAMSTOWN THEATRE FESTIVAL July 17-Aug. 3. At Williams College '62 Center for Theatre and Dance, Williamstown; The Annex, North Adams; Peter W. Foote Vietnam Veterans Memorial Skating Rink, North Adams. Weekend passes and single tickets available. 413-458-3253,