Williamstown Theatre Festival Launches 2016 Season with THE ROSE TATTOO and COST OF LIVING This Weekend

Williamstown Theatre Festival hosts the opening night for its first two shows of the 2016 Season tonight, July 2nd at 8:00pm.

First up on the Main Stage is Tennessee Williams' Tony Award-winning play, The Rose Tattoo (June 28 - July 17). Obie Award-winner Trip Cullman directs Academy Award-winner Marisa Tomei in this new production, a new production of this intoxicating comedy, which won the Tony Award for Best Play in 1951. After retreating from the world in grief, widow Serafina (Tomei) revives and rejoins the world when the hot-blooded trucker Alvaro (Christopher Abbott) arrives at her doorstep. Passion, gossip, music and mystery fill the air in this steamy Gulf Coast town, where possibility and promise ignite.

The cast includes Academy Award-winner, Marisa Tomei, along with Christopher Abbott ("Girls"), Katie Lee Hill (The Wildness), Darren Pettie ("Mad Men"), Will Pullen (Goat), Portia (Ruined) Lindsay Mendez (Wicked), Barbara Rosenblat ("Orange Is the New Black") and Constance Shulman ("Orange Is the New Black").

The Rose Tattoo begins previews Tuesday, June 28th and is scheduled through Sunday, July 17th. Stay for talkbacks after the performances on July 5th and July 12th or the special Lawn Talk before the July 10th show.

The Nikos Stage season begins Saturday, July 2nd with the world premiere of Martyna Majok's play, Cost of Living (June 29 - July 10).

Obie Award-winner Jo Bonney directs Martyna Majok's play about four very different people, with four very different circumstances, each trying to get by. Eddie (Wendell Pierce), an unemployed truck driver, reunites with his ex-wife Ani (Katy Sullivan) after she suffers a devastating accident. John (Gregg Mozgala), a brilliant and witty doctoral student, hires over-worked Jess (Rebecca Naomi Jones) as a caregiver. As the lives of these very different people intersect, Majok's play delves into the chasm between abundance and need, and explores the space where bodies - abled and disabled - meet each other.

The cast includes Rebecca Naomi Jones (American Idiot), Gregg Mozgala (Downsizing Camus), and Wendell Pierce ("The Wire," WTF's 2008 Broke-ology) and Katy Sullivan (The Long Red Road).

Cost of Living begins previews Wednesday, June 29th and is scheduled through Sunday, July 10th. A post-show talkback will take place after the July 5th performance, and the July 3rd performance includes a special Lawn Talk before the performance.

Tickets for all Williamstown Theatre Festival productions can be purchased online at wtfestival.org, by phone at 413-597-3400, or in person at the '62 Center for Theatre and Dance Box Office at 1000 Main St (Route 2), Williamstown, MA 01267.

Under artistic director Mandy Greenfield, Williamstown Theatre Festival, recipient of the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre, creates renowned productions of both world premiere plays as well as revivals of some of the great works of the Western theatrical canon. Since 1955, Williamstown Theatre Festival has brought together gifted emerging theater artists with our country's finest theater professionals to produce a vibrant summer season in the Berkshires, while simultaneously running one of the country's top training and professional development programs. In 2015, the Festival launched a New Play Commissioning Program as well as a community-immersive theatre initiative which unites professional theater artists with Berkshire residents to create new work. Playwrights under commission include Fernanda Coppel, Melissa James Gibson (co-commission with Second Stage), Halley Feiffer, Matthew Lopez, Jiehae Park, Benjamin Scheuer and Lucy Thurber. Additionally, each summer the Festival produces an array of unique cultural events including family-friendly theater, Late-Night Cabarets, music concerts and comedy. The artists and productions shaped at the Festival each summer fill theaters in New York, around the country and abroad. Recent critically acclaimed productions launched by Williamstown Theatre Festival include: Sam Shepard's FOOL FOR LOVE directed by Daniel Aukin, starring Nina Arianda and Sam Rockwell; Bernard Pomerance's THE ELEPHANT MAN directed by Scott Ellis, starring Bradley Cooper; John Kander, Frank Ebb and Terrence McNally's THE VISIT, directed by John Doyle, starring Chita Rivera, among many others. For more information, visit www.wtfestival.org.