For more than 60 years, hundreds of young artists have spent their summers at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts, hoping to start their careers on the right foot. Frequented by influential vacationers to the Berkshires, the months-long event is considered a rare opportunity for up-and-coming actors to share scenes with Tony Award winners, for emerging directors to learn from industry titans. Work the festival and securing gigs in the industry will be easier, thanks to the company’s standing, its vast network and its proved track record of transferring productions to New York City. Sure, the pay is low — or nonexistent — but the payoff is known to be well worth it.
Or is it? Recent complaints and subsequent interviews with 25 current and former festival staffers, department heads, apprentices and interns reveal not a professional springboard but a development program that exposes artists-in-training to repeated safety hazards and a toxic work culture under the guise of prestige.
In an eight-page letter and accompanying appendix, sent to the festival’s leadership and board in February and obtained by The Times, 75 alumni alleged a pattern of dangerous working conditions and demanded changes to its treatment of young arts workers. “It wasn’t just one summer. It wasn’t just one production. It wasn’t just one bad apple,” read the letter. “The system that sustains Williamstown Theatre Festival is deeply broken.”