DORSET — Dorset Theatre Festival is announcing its 48th main stage summer season beginning June 20, including “Salvage,” a new play by Lena Kaminsky (June 20-July 5); “The Book Club Play” by Karen Zacarías (July 11-26); “Satellites,” a new play by Erin Breznitsky (Aug. 6-16); and “Other Desert Cities” by Jon Robin Baitz (Aug. 22-Sept. 6). All performances will take place at the Dorset Playhouse.
“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 Kaminsky and 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.
“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.
The Dorset season will continue with “The Book Club Play,” Zacarías’ 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.
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. Jackson Gay returns to direct after helming the festival’s productions of “Sidekicked” (2024), Stephen King’s “Misery” (2023), “Wait Until Dark” (2022), and “Slow Food” (2019).
Next on the 2025 main stage will be an intimate, romantic and epic new love story, “Satellites,” by Breznitsky and directed by Adrienne Campbell-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 seven 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.
Breznitsky, a Brooklyn-based playwright, 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 Adrienne Campbell-Holt, a six-time festival director, whose 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 New York.
The season will conclude with Baitz’ contemporary dramatic comedy “Other Desert Cities,” 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.
Baitz is a Rockefeller Foundation Award and a Drama Desk Award-winner and a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist. Egan served as artistic director/producer of the Ojai Playwrights Conference 2002-22 and for 20 years as producing artistic director at the Mark Taper Forum, and also as associate artistic director of Seattle Repertory Theatre.
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