NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Workers were busy inside The Annex on Thursday morning, getting the black-box theater ready for the summer season seven days away. 

 

Outside, officials were ready to cut the ribbon to mark the first expansion of the venerated Williamstown Theatre Festival.

 

"We purchased this center in 2020 as a strategic step in expanding our footprint and giving us more flexibility. We were intending to build a scene shop right there in the Price Chopper. But the pandemic kind of put that plan on pause," said Kit Ingui, managing director of operations and advancement. "This year, as our programming has expanded, we realized we needed a new home for some of our projects, and a new vision for this space took hold."

 

The theater festival, which calls the '62 Center for Theatre and Dance at Williams College home, is opening The Annex in space formerly occupied by a Rent-A-Center within the old Price Chopper complex. 

 

The theater will host an opera, a dance, a storytelling musical and a late-night series starting at 11 this first year.

 

Raphael Picciarelli, managing director of strategy and transformation, described it as a part of a "radical reimagining for the festival."

 

"This venue is a real leap forward. It's not just a new building, it's really a sign of the festival's growth and evolution, and it really reflects our commitment to year-round programming, to how we want to engage with the community in the future, creative risk taking that's always been at the center of this institution," he said. "For the first time ever, we are putting up eight full productions at once."

 

This is just phase one of the transformation, which included demolition, signage, electrical and lighting and core infrastructure. The next phase will be to expand the backstage, add a box office and other public spaces. Moresi & Associates has been overseeing the work along with Production Director Adrian White. 

 

"The truth is, this idea really started a little more than six months ago, and yet, here we are with a performance space, so it's pretty remarkable," Picciarelli said. 

 

Mayor Jennifer Macksey welcomed the festival to North Adams, recalling her first "remarkable experience" at there as a guest of Christopher Reeve because she exercised his horse. 

 

"That's where I think I first began my love for all the work that you do," she said. "North Adams loves and encourages a creative community, one powered by the arts. We've seen creativity in our downtown. We've seen creativity in our neighborhoods, and now we expand into State Road. 

 

"The Annex isn't just a building. It's a promise. It's a commitment from the theater to not only work with the city of North Adams, but to harness all that creative ability that we here have locally and bring new people to our region."

 

State Rep. John Barrett III said it was another aspect of the creative economy and a great day for not only North Adams but Northern Berkshire and the entire county. "The perseverance in this area, you've all captured it, and we're very proud to have you here and be part of this new, I say new, growing, I should say, economy that we have here."

 

Williams College President Maud Mandel said the Williamstown Theatre Festival to her is "the wonderful adventure that takes place next door to my house every summer," and one that takes less than 10 minutes to walk to. 

 

"So I'm a little sad to move down the road, but also super excited by this wonderful evolution and development for the theater festival," she joked. "Obviously, Williams is the longtime partner and beneficiary of this extraordinary summer festival, and it's been, in my own personal role, really wonderful to be on the board and part of watching this evolution occur. 

 

"But I think today really marks a new day. It's really a tremendous milestone. So I offer Williams' formal congratulations, as well as my personal congratulations to everybody who made it happen."

 

The gathering had a look inside the building, where the staging was being installed and the seating put in place. Wires, equipment and ladders were scattered around but the interior but Picciarelli said the doors would be opening for invited dress rehearsals and preview performances. 

 

One of the first productions at The Annex will be an adaptation of the Pulizer-winning opera "Vanessa," from Heartbeat Opera.

 

The opera company's Artistic Director Jacob Ashworth and Executive Director Christian De Gré Cárdenas joined the early-morning ribbon-cutting celebration. 

 

"I do feel like everything that's going on in this space is very inspiring," said Ashworth, whose mother babysat Gwyneth Paltrow when she was a festival apprentice. "You just heard today, it's really the promise of this festival, the promise of the Berkshires themselves, and what I've always sort of imagined as what can happen up here, which is that you can give artists a space to work, and somehow this whole community comes around them and says, 'Yeah, we want that. And we want that to happen here.'"

 

The gothic "Vanessa," despite being a hit in the 1950s, has had "a troubled reception history," he said. "Williamstown was really excited to partner with us and try to really ask big questions about that and figure out why this piece hasn't really made it in the world the way that it should. And here's such a perfect ground to give it another shot and to do something new with it."

 

Cárdenas said he felt very supported by the festival and that "this theater already looks nicer than most of the Off Broadway theaters I've worked in, and it's a really incredible space."