New Musical and More Set for Adirondack Theatre Festival 2025 Season

Adirondack Theatre Festival has unveiled its 31st season two days ahead of its “Vegas, Baby!” benefit bash at the newly renovated Heritage Hall inside the Cool Insuring Arena. 

In the tradition of ATF’s wildly popular Mystic Pizza, Pump Up the Volume, and The King’s Wife, the season kicks off with a concert presentation of a new musical from June 27 - 29. The Village of Vale is presented by special arrangement with Tony Award-winner Jane Dubin (Peter and the Starcatcher, An American in Paris) and Vale Creative Productions. In the wake of an environmental disaster, survivors write a new history. But the myth they teach their children conceals an act of violence. When a stranger arrives and uncovers their secret, will she choose revenge or reconciliation? This haunting musical thriller is composed by Netflix animation music manager John McGrew with book and lyrics by Jonathan Karpinos and Joseph Varca and direction by Lisa Rothe. 

Next comes a full production of a new musical comedy fresh from Broadway: ATF Founding Artistic Director Martha Banta directs Gutenberg! The Musical! by Anthony King and Scott Brown, running July 10 - 18. Join wannabe composers Doug and Bud on the most important night of their lives: a “backer’s audition” for real live Broadway producers! Never mind that they’re goofballs with the worst concept for a show ever: a musical about the inventor of the printing press, Johann Gutenberg. Doug and Bud gamely play Medieval European characters, from Gutenberg’s love interest Helvetica, to a sinister Monk with a cat named Satan who is determined to prevent the villagers from learning to read. Nothing is sacred and everything is silly in this quest for the printed word... and a Broadway contract! Gutenberg! The Musical! really did run on Broadway in 2023 and was nominated for a Tony Award. It was hailed as “outrageously funny and strangely, sweetly sublime” (Vulture).

The festival then takes a local turn with a weekend of developmental readings of The Last American Newspaper from July 25 - 27. Adapted by former Post Star editor Ken Tingley from his memoir, the play spotlights the theatre’s own region and its residents. An ambitious team of local journalists cover transformative moments in the lives of Warren, Washington, and Saratoga Counties, from dramatic exposés about environmental disasters and the opioid epidemic to Mark Mahoney’s triumphant 2009 Pulitzer Prize win. The Last American Newspaper marks the first time ATF has commissioned a local writer since The 5 and Dime Plays in 2000, which included work by conservative activist Robert Schulz and Glens Falls Chronicle Managing Editor Cathy Dede. The readings will be helmed by Marcus Kyd, director of ATF’s 2024 hit Dial “M” for Murder. The Last American Newspaper was commissioned by ATF with the support of the John E. Herlihy Literary Fellowship. Subscribers may add the staged reading to their subscription package for $20.

The festival’s regional focus continues with a production of Queens Girl: Black in the Green Mountains by Caleen Sinnette Jennings and directed by Danielle Drakes, running July 31 - August 6. The play dramatizes the true story of Jackie, a teenager in the 1960s who glimpses a brochure for the perfect college in Bennington, Vermont. At her high school in Nigeria, she dreams of returning to the US and studying in the picturesque Green Mountains. She arrives just in time to become one of twelve Black Bennington women hitchhiking to see Sly and the Family Stone, agitating for equality, and trudging through snow... so much snow! Queens Girl: Black in the Green Mountains invites audiences to visit a familiar landscape through the eyes of a witty, idealistic young woman out to change the world for the better. The one-woman play was commissioned and originally produced by Everyman Theater in Baltimore, MD, where it was celebrated as “a gorgeous piece of theater” (Maryland Theatre Guide). The ATF production marks the play’s Northeast premiere.

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