"Slow is not my style," the 71-year-old Martin said by telephone from Williamstown.
One look at his schedule and you'd never know he suffered a stroke in the fall, the effects of which can still be seen in his left arm, hand and leg.
"The best thing for me is work," Martin said in a brief interview before heading off for physical therapy.
"I'm never better than when I'm working."
Indeed. Since the end of his first season as WTF's artistic director last summer, Martin has remounted his WTF production of "The Corn is Green" for the Huntington Theatre in Boston. He directed a new play by Christopher Durang, "Why Torture is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them," for The Public Theater in New York in the spring and there is talk about bringing the play back in the upcoming New York season. He is scheduled to direct "She Stoops to Conquer" at McCarter Theatre in Princeton, N.J. and Noel Coward's "Present Laughter" at the Roundabout Theatre in New York.
Right now Martin's focus is on Williamstown, where he is starting his second season as artistic director. He also is directing a new play by Jonathan Marc Sherman, "Knickerbocker," for the Nikos Stage, where the play is due to open July 8.
The Festival's 2009 season -- its 55th -- actually begins Wednesday in Williams College's ‘62 Center for Theater
Opening night is Thursday at 8, preceded at 5:30 by a gala anniversary reception with remarks at 7 by Martin and others who have been associated with the Festival over its 55 years.
"Children," about a family with unresolved issues that come to a head in their summer home on an island off the coast of Massachusetts, comes to Williamstown on the heels of a three-week run Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut. It's a play Martin says he's always wanted to do. It's the perfect choice, he says, to kick off a 55th anniversary season -- an opening Main Stage production of a 35-year-old play by a playwright with a long association with the Festival.
Following "Children" on the Main Stage is the Festival's first-ever Sam Shepard -- "True West."
"It really is time we did Shepard here," Martin said, "and this play is such a showpiece for actors."
If anything speaks Williamstown as longtime fans like to affectionately think of the Festival, it is George Kelly's "The Torch Bearers," a large-cast American period piece (circa 1922) with a roster of actors that includes such WTF familiars as Jessica Hecht, Becky Ann Baker, Katie Finneran, Edward Herrmann and the great and gracious Marian Seldes.
"This is a production that spans 30 years of the Festival and all its regimes," Martin said. "Dylan [Baker, the show's director] and I have been talking about doing this for years.
"It's one of the great American classics, although it has a weak third act which Dylan has trimmed and folded into the second act."
The Main Stage closes with "Quartermaine's Terms" by British playwright Simon Gray, whose "Butley" Martin directed on Broadway with Nathan Lane in the starring role.
With a cast that features Jayne Atkinson, Jefferson Mays and Simon Jones and a very much in demand director, Tony nominee Maria Aitken, who is responsible for the innovative stage adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock's film classic, "The 39 Steps," this production was eagerly sought after.
"Several theaters were interested in this production," Martin said. "Of course, I wanted it for here. Maria emphasized how many other theaters wanted this show and I said again ‘I want it.' " Martin has it.
"We moved a lot of things around for this. I'm very excited to have it," Martin said. "I think audiences will be surprised at how funny and touching this play [about a group of restless Cambridge dons] is."
If traditions and "family" are celebrated on the Main Stage, the Nikos Stage speaks to a newer generation of writers. All three plays in the Nikos this summer are world premieres. That's an important part of WTF's reason for being, Martin says.
"Two of the plays were read here last summer and all three playwrights are writers I've worked with and believe in very much," Martin said.
"Knickerbocker" is being followed by Noah Haidle's "What is the Cause of Thunder?" and then "Caroline in Jersey," which brings Boston playwright Melinda Lopez to the Berkshires.
"I've done two of Melinda's plays in Boston and I think it's time the Berkshires were exposed to her writing."
This is a shorter season than Williamstown audiences are used to -- four Main Stage productions instead of five and only three in the Nikos instead of four. The season also is starting two weeks later than usual. And while available space at Williams College for the Festival's technical and support staff is part of the reason for the late start, the chief reason is the sagging economy, Martin said.
"The only other options we faced were to either significantly trim our production budget or the size of our productions.
"It seemed to me that of all the options, this [a shorter season] was the least noxious."
Clearly, WTF has come a long way since its first season in 1955 when the Festival, under the artistic leadership of David C. Bryant, Jr. chairman of the drama program at Williams College, and his artistic associate, a brash, talented young man from Yale School of Drama named Nikos Psacharopoulos (who, in 1956, became the festival's artistic director and guided its fortunes for 33 years), presented a 10-production season of chiefly commercial plays. This was good old-fashioned one-week summer stock that had been the vision of a small group of Williamstown businessmen and longtime residents who talked Bryant into moving his Boston summer theater program to Williamstown.
Over its 51/2 decades, WTF has given a start to some of theater, film and television's more enduring and familiar actors and actresses, nurtured playwrights, moved nearly two dozen plays on to New York and major regional theaters, won a Tony Award for Outsanding Regional Theater and earned a major national profile.
Martin attributes all that success to what he calls calls the "Williamstown Spirit," that force that has guided and continues to guide the theater's artistic vision and the men and women who make that vision come to life.
"It's my contention," Martin said in an e-mail, "that this energy is fueled by the many young artists and aspiring theater professionals who fill its non-Equity and apprentice programs and build the sets and costumes while providing a very high level of morale."
"The kids," Martin calls them. They nourish not only the theater but also Martin.
"That spirit is real and palpable," he said by phone. "The lifeblood over all the regimes here is the kids, how they learn side-by-side with professionals and how they grow up within the Festival.
"What I call the ‘Williamstown spirit' is most buoyed and supported by the kids. It's not the kind of passion you can teach."
Festival history in brief
1955 -- Williamstown Theatre Festival opens its first production, "The Bridge and the Bumblebee," directed by artistic director David C. Bryant, Jr.
1956 -- Nikos Psacharopoulos, Bryant's artistic associate, named artistic director after Bryant leaves. Theater repertory expands into classics; core company of actors develops
1960s/'70s -- Theater develops reputation for innovative approaches to classics; staff and company grows; activities expand to include Second Company, late-night cabaret, play readings
1980s -- The Other Stage; The Free Theatre
1989 -- Nikos Psacharopoulos dies
1990 -- Peter Hunt, George Morfogen, Austin Pendleton share artistic director duties for season
1991 -- Peter Hunt named sole artistic director
1996 -- Peter Hunt steps down; Michael Ritchie named WTF producing director
2002 -- Festival receives Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre
2004 -- Festival marks 50th anniversary; Michael Ritchie steps down at end of season, the Festival's last in Adams Memorial Theatre
2005 -- First season in Williams College's brand new ‘62 Center for Theater and Dance; Roger Rees takes over as artistic director
2008 -- Nicholas Martin replaces Roger Rees as artistic director after Rees steps down at end of season
WTF Training
Program Alumni
Kate Burton (1980)
Dick Cavett (1958)
Patricia Clarkson (1984)
Tony Goldwyn (1981)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (1989)
Kate Hudson (1995)
Allison Janney (1985)
Jane Kaczmarek (1981)
Jennifer Jason Leigh ((1979)
Gwyneth Paltrow (1981)
Austin Pendleton (1957)
David Hyde Pierce (1980)
Christopher Reeve (1968)
Christian Slater (1981)
Kiefer Sutherland (1984)
Sigourney Weaver (1972)
Festival
landmarks
Including "Broke-ology" and "The Understudy," which will be produced in New York in the upcoming theater season, Williamstown Theatre Festival has sent nearly two dozen productions to the city and beyond. But there have been several productions that, for a variety of reasons, could be considered landmarks in WTF's 55 year history.
1981 -- "The Greeks"
1982 -- "Tennessee Williams: A Celebration"
1988 -- "The Legend of Oedipus"
1996 -- "The Ride Down Mt. Morgan"
1997 -- "Dead End"
2001 -- "The Man Who Had All the Luck"
2003 -- "The Chekhov Cycle"
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