WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — News this week that the Williamstown Theatre Festival will go dark again this summer has not yet engendered widespread concern in the town's business community.

 

"None of the members have reached out in panic," Williamstown Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Sue Briggs said on Wednesday afternoon. "I'm really pleased.

 

"The rumor on the street has been this is what they need in order to come back and be a viable festival. … With that said, I have not had any real one-on-one conversations with business owners about it yet."

 

"It" was the announcement Tuesday, in the form of interviews reported in the Washington Post and Berkshire Eagle, that the WTF would not be staging any theatrical events in Williamstown in the summer of 2026 — just the second time since the Tony Award-winning festival has been absent from the summer scene since it was founded in 1955.

 

The first time was the summer of 2020, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The festival returned for a scaled down 2021 season and staged four straight seasons that de-emphasized the kind of fully-staged productions of standards and new works that characterized the festival's first 65 years.

 

In 2021, the WTF's return from the COVID shutdown was marred by allegations of "dangerous working conditions."

 

Last summer, the festival hosted its most ambitious program since before the pandemic, including a Tennessee Williams play featuring Hollywood star Pamela Anderson, the world premiere of a drama written by a Tony-nominated playwright, and two events in North Adams, one of which was performed on the ice sheet at the Peter W. Foote Vietnam Veterans Memorial Rink.