Dorset Theatre Festival Reveals 2025 Season

Dorset Theatre Festival has announced its 48th Main Stage Summer Season beginning June 20, 2025, including Salvage, a new play by Lena Kaminsky (June 20 - July 5); The Book Club Play by Karen Zacarías (July 11 - July 26); Satellites, a new play by Erin Breznitsky (August 6 - 16); and Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz (August 22 - September 6). All performances will take place at the Dorset Playhouse (104 Cheney Rd, Dorset, VT 05251). 

“This season celebrates the Festival's strength at bringing new stories to our audiences in southern Vermont and beyond. ” said Will Rucker, Dorset's executive artistic director. “We are excited to keep the tradition of making world-class theater outside of New York City alive. This year's main stage season will bring two brand new plays, stunning designs, and sensational artists to the Dorset Playhouse. I am looking forward to experiencing these heartwarming, funny, romantic, and shocking productions with everyone.”

The 2025 season will open with the new heartfelt comedy, Salvage by Lena Kaminsky, directed by M. Bevin O'Gara. 

In Salvage, Carla attempts to junk the overwhelming collection of mirrors from her childhood home at her small town dump. Instead, amid other people's trash, she finds the treasure of two new friends she didn't know she needed. Past lives and future plans intertwine – and sometimes collide – as together these neighbors sort through what to toss and what to take away. And maybe, discover the magic potion for moving on? Salvage is a funny and heartwarming new play about what can happen when we allow ourselves to be seen.

“This play feels like a love letter to small towns like ours, where everybody knows everybody and yet you still find support in unlikely places or unlikely folks, ” said Rucker. “Playwright Lena Kaminsky has inspired us to make a town dump look beautiful and magical. I love the characters in this story about the family we create for ourselves.” 

Playwright Lena Kaminsky's short film Little Mouse (written & directed), currently streaming on Omeleto, premiered at Dances With Films, NYC where it won the Audience Award and has screened at festivals around the country and internationally. Her short play Crime of Curiosity premiered in Chicago with The Eclectic Full Contact Theatre (Patchwork Playfest, Audience Award). 

“Dorset Theatre Festival is the perfect home for this story and I am so excited to share it with this community.  Much like the rural town that inspired this play, I think the themes of community and connection will resonate with the audience here, and folks will leave feeling hopeful. See you at the dump!” said Lena Kaminsky, playwright. 

The director of Salvage, M. Bevin O'Gara, spent three years as the Producing Artistic Director at the Kitchen Theatre Company in Ithaca, NY and 15 years with the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston, most recently filling the role of Associate Producer. During her time at the Huntington, O'Gara oversaw dozens of productions, workshops and readings and played an active role in realizing new work. 

The Dorset season will continue with The Book Club Play by Karen Zacarías, a comedy about books and the people who love them. When the members of a devoted book club become the subjects of a documentary film and accept a provocative new member, their long-standing group dynamics take a hilarious turn. A sold-out hit at theaters across the country, this delightful and engaging play is sprinkled with wit, joy and novels galore.

 

Karen Zacarías, author of last year's Dorset hit Native Gardens, was recently named by American Theatre magazine as one of the most produced playwrights in the United States. She is one of the inaugural resident playwrights at Arena Stage in Washington, DC, a core founder of the Latinx Theatre Commons, and founder of the award-winning Young Playwrights' Theater, one of the best arts education programs in the nation. 

Jackson Gay returns to Dorset to direct after helming the Festival's acclaimed productions of Sidekicked (2024),  Stephen King's Misery (2023), Wait Until Dark (2022), and Slow Food (2019), which reunited actors Dan Butler and Peri Gilpin, both alums of the TV comedy Frasier. 

Next on the 2025 Main Stage will be an intimate, romantic, and epic new love story, SATELLITES by Erin Breznitsky, directed by Adrienne Compbell-Holt

In Satellites, girl meets boy, girl marries boy, girl moves on after boy goes missing in outer space...until boy mysteriously reappears on Earth 7 years later. Astronaut Mike and climate scientist Katherine awkwardly meet again for the first time in a NASA waiting room. While he has been lost in the far reaches of the cosmos, she has forged ahead on her own, grounded in the earthbound reality of career and motherhood. Memories of the couple's romantic past converge with an impossible reunion in the present as they attempt to bridge the astronomical gap between then and now. Intimate, charming, and beautiful, Satellites is about time, space, and two people with great ambitions searching for connection.

Erin Breznitsky is a Brooklyn-based playwright and theater artist. She has been a finalist for Shakespeare's New Contemporaries and a semi-finalist for the O'Neill Theatre Center National Playwright's Conference and the Princess Grace Playwriting Award.

Satellites will be directed by six-time Festival director, Adrienne Campbell-Holt, whose previous Dorset World Premieres, Downstairs (2017) by Theresa Rebeck starring Tim and Tyne Daly and  Still (2023) by Lia Romeo starring Tim Daly and Jayne Atkison, went on to acclaimed Off-Broadway productions in NYC. 

The season will conclude with the contemporary dramatic comedy, OTHER DESERT CITIES by Jon Robin Baitz, directed by Robert Egan. 

When Brooke arrives at her parents' Palm Springs mansion with the manuscript of her tell-all memoir in tow, she unearths a devastating family secret—throwing her parents into a panic that threatens to rip the clan apart. With biting wit and razor-sharp insight, this gripping story, a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, skillfully navigates the complex dynamics of family loyalty, political divides, and buried truths.

Playwright Jon Robin Baitz is a Rockefeller Foundation Award and a Drama Desk Award-winner and a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. His plays include The Film Society, The Substance of Fire, Three Hotels, A Fair Country, Ten Unknowns, Mizlansky/Zilinsky, a new version of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, which was produced on Broadway in 2001, and The Paris Letter. He is the creator of the hit ABC TV show Brothers & Sisters, which he also executive produced for the first two seasons. His PBS film version of Three Hotels won a Humanitas Award.

Director Robert Egan served as Artistic Director/Producer of the Ojai Playwrights Conference from 2002 to 2022. He is also Founder and President of RHEgan Productions, LLC where he conceives, writes, produces and directs major live events and media projects. Robert served for 20 years as Producing Artistic Director at the Mark Taper Forum, and also as Associate Artistic Director of Seattle Repertory Theatre. Robert has produced, directed and dramaturged more than 350 new plays in the United States and Europe. 

Subscription sales for the season begin March 19th, and single tickets will be available on April 16th. Additional casting for the 2025 Main Stage season will be announced at a later date. More information is available on Dorset's website.

“Heading into this season, I'm reflecting on how much New England theaters, and our own Dorset Theatre Festival, have contributed to the American canon. It's an honor to be a part of a community that keeps its arts organizations alive, meaning we can continue launching new plays,” said Rucker. “We have some pretty thrilling casting announcements to make soon, so I'm hoping that we'll be bringing a lot of people to Dorset this summer.” 

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