The Williamstown Theatre Festival has scotched its scheduled production of Frank Pugliese's The Talk, which was to have opened July 12 and run through July 23, and plugged in A.R. Gurney's Ancestral Voices. A spokesman for the fest said it was decided that the Pugliese work was in need of further development, resulting in the sudden substitution.

Scott Ellis, who was to have staged The Talk, will instead pilot Voices. The cast of the show, in which the actors read from scripts, includes Josh Hamilton and Maureen Anderman (both seen in The Waverly Gallery Off-Broadway this past spring), Richard Easton, Marian Seldes (The Skin of Our Teeth) and Michael Gross.

Pugliese is author of such plays as Aven `U Boys and Hope Is the Thing with Feathers.

Ancestral Voices is getting a work-out in the Northeast this summer. A second production, at the Westport Country Playhouse -- and featuring Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward and James Naughton, among others -- opens July 10 and runs almost concurrently with the WTF staging. The Gurney play debuted at Lincoln Center Theatre last fall.

--By Robert Simonson