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Williamstown Again Williams' Town in Summer of '25

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Williamstown Theatre Festival has announced a 2025 season with five full-scale productions, including two world premieres and two revivals of dramas by Tennessee Williams.
 
The summer festival lists the five productions on its website, which provides no information about dates and says tickets go on sale "in March."
 
In addition to two of his own works, Williams' influence is seen in one of the new works planned for the summer season, according to the WTF.
 
Williams, a Pulitzer Prize winner, was to have been included in the WTF's aborted 2020 season with a production of "A Streetcar Named Desire."
 
After the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of that season, the festival made its production available on a streaming service.
 
His canon has been a longtime staple of the festival, including a 1999 production of "Camino Real" on the Main Stage. Williams himself had a summer residency in Williamstown in 1982, one year before his death.
 
"Camino Real" returns for 2025 along with a production of "Not About Nightingales," one of Williams' earliest works, which he penned in 1938.
 
Williams' "Camino Real" premiered on Broadway in 1953, six years after his best known work, "A Streetcar Named Desire."
 
This summer's world premieres at the WTF will be Jeremy O. Harris' "Spirit of the People" and a new work said to be "inspired by the work of Tennessee Williams."
 
Harris wrote "Slave Play," which was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play in 2018. He was nominated for an NAACP Image Award in 2022 for writing the screenplay for the film "Zola."
 
The Williams-inspired new work, "Untitled on Ice" is described on the WTF website as "dance/theater" and will be staged "live in an ice rink." The festival's website does not identify the rink, but Broadway publication Playbill reported the production will be staged at the Peter W. Foote Vietnam Veterans Memorial Rink in North Adams.
 
The fifth show in the Williamstown Theatre Festival's season is a revival of the American opera "Vanessa," composed by Samuel Barber with a book by Gian Carlo Menotti. "Vanessa" was first staged by the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1958.

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Williams College Lone Proponent for Development of Water Street Lot

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff

Williams College hopes to replace the current Facilities Services building on Latham Street and use that space for a new  athletics complex. 
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — If the town accepts an offer from Williams College, a 1.27-acre lot that long has been eyed as a possible venue for housing and economic development instead will find a use similar to its history.
 
The college was the lone respondent to the town's request for proposals to purchase and develop 59 Water St., a dirt lot known around town as the "old town garage site." This was first reported Wednesday by Greylock News. 
 
If successful, the college plans to use the former town garage property for the school's Facilities Services building. Or it could be turned back into a parking lot.
 
Williams' offer includes a $500,000 upfront payment and a 10-year agreement to make $50,000 annual donations to the Mount Greylock Regional School District according to the proposal unsealed on Wednesday afternoon.
 
If it closes the deal, the college said it will explore development of a three- to four-story Facilities Services building with "a structured parking facility providing approximately 170 spaces."
 
"[I]f site constraints impact our ability to develop both structured parking and the Facilities Services building, our backup proposal is to develop the parking structure with approximately 170 spaces, also with capacity to support institutional and public needs," the college's proposal reads.
 
The college's current Facilities property at 60 Latham St. has an assessed value — for the .42-acre lot only — of $113,000 and an annual property tax bill of $1,606, according to the town's website.
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