The 2000 Williamstown Theatre Festival is beginning to take shape, with new plays by Austin Pendleton and Frank Pugliese, as well as productions of works by Thornton Wilder, Noel Coward and Moss Hart, planned. The festival will run June 14-Aug. 27.

The most ambitious project of the season will be a staging of six of the ten one-acts that make up Noel Coward's Tonight at 8:30. Rent helmer Michael Grief and Chicago choreographer Ann Reinking will direct. The half dozen plays will be seen on two separate evenings, June 16-July 2.

Other revivals include Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, directed by Darko Tresnjak, which will play Aug. 2-13; Hart's Light Up the Sky, piloted by Christopher Ashley (Aug. 16-27); Lanford Wilson's The Hot L Baltimore, directed by Joe Mantello (July 5-16); and Hedda Gabler, translated by Jon Robin Baitz, directed by Nicholas Martin and starring Kate Burton (July 19-30). The Ibsen will later travel to the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, Long Island.

Among the new works is Pendleton's meditation on fame and the theatre, Orson's Shadow (June 14-25). The play will boast the same creative team, headed by director David Cromer, featured in its premiere at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company earlier this year. The play will journey south to the Westport Country Playhouse after its Williamstown gig. A New York engagement is expected to follow. Shadow is also slated for the upcoming Old Globe Theatre season.

Williamstown will also see the U.S. Premiere of Simon Gray's The Late Middle Classes, directed by Roger Rees (July 16-Aug. 6); Pugliese's The Talk, directed by Scott Ellis (July 12-23); and Joel Fields' How I Fell in Love (June 28-July 9). -- By Robert Simonson