Two years after eliminating the role of artistic director in favor of a less centralized approach to programming, the Williamstown Theatre Festival is reviving the position as the company plans for a 2027 season.
The latest search for an artistic director to oversee programming comes “after a period of reflection,” Margaret Gould Stewart, chair of the board of trustees, wrote in an email sent this week to festival supporters.
The change comes after the storied festival went on hiatus in 2026, and is part of a reshuffling among the festival’s leadership that Stewart announced in the email. That reshuffling includes the appointment of Kit Ingui as executive director after two years as managing director for operations and advancement, while another managing director for strategy and transformation, Raphael Picciarelli, has moved to an advisory role. Jeremy O. Harris continues as head of the festival’s Creative Collective, which the festival had billed as a new, more collaborative leadership model when the playwright and producer was hired in 2024. The hiring of a new artistic director means Harris will no longer steer the creative direction of the festival. It last had a full time artistic director in 2021.
Harris’ arrival was intended to diversify the festival’s programming, foster collaborations among artists from different disciplines, and promote artistic development by including input from a rotating group of directors, according to an announcement when he was hired. He programmed a shortened season focused on the work of Tennessee Williams in 2025. The Creative Collective under Harris will still focus on those areas, while the new artistic director will provide overall creative leadership, Ingui said by email. She characterized resurrecting the artistic directorship as the next step in an ongoing evolution, rather than a return to a previous model. Ingue declined to offer a timeline for filling the position.
“The Creative Collective introduced valuable new perspectives and helped us experiment with different approaches to programming,” Ingui said. “One of the lessons from that experience was the need for dedicated artistic leadership that is deeply connected to the organization’s vision beyond any individual festival season.”
In the short term, that organizational vision includes staging a festival in 2027, and shoring up the financial and organizational foundation of the festival for the future, Ingui said. Whether the company can return to running the festival every year remains to be seen. The festival has not confirmed whether 2027 will return to the traditional length, or the shortened version offered in 2025.
“We’re still evaluating the right producing cadence, including whether a full festival can take place annually,” Ingui said. “What matters most is creating a model that allows us to support ambitious artistic work consistently and responsibly.”
Like many theater groups, the Williamstown Theatre Festival ran into challenges stemming from the pandemic in 2020, when the company canceled in-person performances and instead produced them for the podcasting and audiobook platform Audible. There were also internal difficulties, including criticism in 2021 from former workers alleging unfair and unsafe working conditions. In February 2021, more than 75 festival alumni signed a detailed letter outlining what they said were instances of racism, sexism, homophobia, and labor exploitation. The festival hired an outside law firm to assess the claims, and by October, artistic director Mandy Greenfield had resigned after seven years. Greenfield’s successor, Jenny Gersten, who had previously served as artistic director, took over in late 2021 before the Williamstown Theatre Festival switched to the Creative Collective model ahead of the 2025 season.
“We’ve learned a great deal about what it takes to support our artistic legacy, while also creating a sustainable and supportive environment for the people who make it possible,” Ingui said. “We don’t view this as a process with a single finish line. Building a healthy, sustainable organization requires ongoing attention to artists, staff, audiences, and the communities we serve.”
Founded in 1954 on the Williams College campus, the festival has become one of the more prestigious summer theater events. The company over the years has produced works from an array of international playwrights and attracted big-name actors, including Matthew Broderick, Olympia Dukakis, Gwyneth Paltrow, Christopher Reeve, Uma Thurman, and Sigourney Weaver. The 2025 season that Harris worked on featured performances from Pamela Anderson, William Jackson Harper, and Chris Messina. Productions staged in Williamstown frequently move to Broadway, which tends to reflect well on the festival, but is not a goal.
“We don’t measure success solely by whether a production transfers to Broadway,” Ingui said. “The relationships, ideas, creative breakthroughs, and careers that begin at Williamstown can have an equally meaningful impact on the broader theater field. Our priority is to create the conditions for exceptional artists and ambitious work to thrive, wherever that work ultimately leads.”