Each year Five Colleges organizes a festival of staged readings, building on a highly successful model originated by the UMass' New World Theater. The primary goals of the festival are to identify and nurture student writers who are engaging in multicultural themes and/or aesthetics; to increase contact between the departments of theater and the communities of color on the respective campuses; and to further Five College exchange through the mechanism of a rotating festival. This year the Word! Festival was hosted by Mount Holyoke. Photos by Noah Loving UM ’19