Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Sharbari Ahmed is a published and award winning short fiction writer. Her short fiction has appeared in "The Gettysburg review", "Catamaran" and the "Asian Pacific American Journal". Ahmed served as co-writer and assistant director on the film The Waiting Room. She also directed the stage play version of Raisins Not Virgins, and a reading of A Voice of Her Own. Ahmed has directed the short films Burkini, Sahar and the Mosque, and Aimee Undercover, about a Muslim convert who is also a buxom, blonde lifeguard. She is currently developing two projects, a TV pilot titled The Chronicles of Zarah, and her next screenplay, BOMBAY DUCK, a love story set in WWII India. She is a columnist for "The Daily Star Weekend Magazine", the largest English language newspaper in Bangladesh. Ahmed recieved her MA in Creative Writing from New York University.

Deb’s plays have been produced at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Cleveland Playhouse, Geva, The Humana Festival, Everyman, Primary Stages, Ensemble Studio Theatre, and hundreds of other theaters around the world.

Lori Soderlind is author of two memoirs: The Change (My Great-American, Postindustrial, Midlife Crisis Tour) and Chasing Montana (A Love Story).  She is director of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Manhattanville College. Her writing has appeared in anthologies and journals; her essay "66 Signs" is included in the Norton Anthology of Best Creative Nonfiction. She has reviewed books for the New York Times and elsewhere.  

Lori began her career in print journalism, working as a reporter, editor, and freelancer for newspapers and magazines across New Jersey and New York. After earning an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, she worked as a city editor at the Times Union newspaper in Albany, NY, and taught writing at SUNY's Albany campus. She was also an adjunct professor at Columbia University and Western Connecticut State University and a professor of journalism at Norwalk Community College in Norwalk, CT,  before taking her position as director of the Manhattanville College MFA program.

Regarding her love of carpentry, Lori was torn between being a writer, a carpenter, or a rock star for much of her early life and finally settled on a career in the area where she felt she might actually have talent. This did not stop her from pursuing her other passions; she has been attempting and sometimes succeeding at renovating houses and barns for much of her adult life and is now practicing scales on her electric bass in earnest, hoping music might regain a place in her creative universe.

Like many creative people, the roots of these passions are easily traced to Lori's childhood. In first grade, two notable essays--one on Abraham Lincoln and one on the marriage of her two favorite stuffed animals, both mice--catapulted her to the sort of grammar school acclaim that sets one’s life course in an instant. Lori soon became a prolific writer of short stories, essays, diary entries, letters, and notes to her classmates, reaching what her mother has labeled her creative zenith in the sixth grade with the musical, “School House Patriots,” for which Lori wrote book, score and lyrics. Former classmates may also recall the school anthem Lori composed, “All Glory to Glenwood School.” Meanwhile, Lori displayed an early passion for making and fixing stuff. She  completely remodeled her dollhouse in her basement workshop as a girl, where she also spent years attempting to build a functioning car using only wood scraps, tin cans, and found objects. In the same period, she enlisted the help of neighborhood boys in building a double-decker tree fort, piling spare sections of white picket fence against a tree and using mud packs in place of concrete. The boys walked off the job when they discovered Lori was a girl (well, duh) and the fort was torn down by her father before it was ever remotely inhabitable. Still, the project telegraphed her affinity for near-condemned properties, which she began collecting or coveting as an adult with her own real power tools.

After experimenting with a derelict lifestyle in high school to “gain material for my art,” Lori went on to  study English in college, then followed her father’s footsteps into journalism—a field where she was able to actually earn a living writing about unusual bar mitzvahs, parachuting grandmothers and the weather. She briefly quit the newspaper world to work in a book store and in a wood shop and, when they fired her there (mainly, she thinks, for being a girl), she set off on the western adventure that would become her first book.

Her latest book, The Change, was the fruit of a long drive she took with her dog Colby, setting off to find "the most depressing places I could find in the country," Lori has explained, though she only had time to scratch the surface. Colby died peacefully at home shortly before his sixteenth birthday. Lori now lives in New York City with her Portuguese water dog Graci.

lorisoderlind.com

Director Theresa Rebeck is a widely produced writer for stage, film, television, and novels, and the most Broadway-produced female playwright of our time. The two-time Emmy-nominated writer, and the Festival’s resident playwright, returns to direct this season on the heels of receiving critical acclaim for the New York productions of two of her own plays which were developed at Dorset Theatre Festival. Dig, which had its World Premiere in Dorset’s 2019 season, debuted Off-Broadway at Primary Stages this past August, and I Need That ran on Broadway this past December at the Roundabout Theatre Company and starred Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actor Danny DeVito.

Will Rucker (Dorset Theatre Festival Executive Artistic Director) first came to Dorset Theatre Festival in its 39th season as the stage manager for Theresa Rebeck’s The Way of the World and served for many seasons as Producing Director before becoming Executive Artistic Director in 2023. In his inaugural season of artistic leadership, Will programmed the world premiere production of Lia Romeo’s Still, which received an Off-Broadway production the following year along with two Outer Critics Circle Awards nominations, including the John Gassner Award for new American plays. Various non-profit, educational, and commercial credits include the Atlantic Theatre Company, The Working Theater, The Playwrights Realm, and comedian Lisa Lampanelli’s Stuffed! (Off-Broadway). Will has worked with playwrights including Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (War at Yale Repertory Theatre), Anna Ziegler (A Delicate Ship at the Playwrights Realm), Phillip Howze (abominable and Self Portraits at Lincoln Center Education), and Hansol Jung (Cardboard Piano). Will was a founding producer of The Party Line, a Brooklyn-based performance company with a penchant for confetti and found spaces, where he produced Emily Zemba’s We Know Edie La Minx Had a Gun and POP!, a walk-around festival in bars and public spaces. He has served as a guest artist at the Yale School of Drama, New York City’s New School for Drama, and has taught Shakespeare and improvisation in juvenile correction centers. He received his MFA in stage management from the Yale School of Drama, where he served as an artistic director of the Yale Cabaret. Originally from Virginia, he attended the University of Virginia and is a member of Actors' Equity Association.   

Ryan Koss (Dorset Theatre Festival Managing Creative Director) has been at the Festival since 2017 after completing his master's degree in arts administration at Baruch College in Manhattan. Most recently Ryan worked as a producing assistant for Tony Award-winning producer, Andy Sandberg, including the showcase ofSimon Says, Off-Broadway at The Culture Project, and as a designer for acclaimed Brooklyn-based floral & event designer, Lindsay Rae Design. Previously, Ryan was a performer with stage credits includingThe New York Spring Spectacularat Radio City Music Hall starring Derek Hough, Laura Benanti and the Rockettes, directed by Tony Award winning directors Diane Paulus and Warren Carlyle; the international tour of the legendary West End musical,We Will Rock You!;Surf! The Musicalat Planet Hollywood Resort in Las Vegas choreographed by RJ Durrell and Nick Florez; the Off-Broadway production ofLucky Guy: The Musicalstarring Emmy-Award Winner Leslie Jordan at Stage 42; the pre-Broadway tour ofSoul Doctor: The Musical; and many productions at regional theaters across the country, including North Shore Music Theatre, Berkshire Theatre Festival, North Carolina Theatre, Westchester Broadway Theatre, Lyric Theatre OKC, The St. Louis Muny, and Music Theatre of Wichita. Ryan also holds a BFA in Musical Theatre from the University of Oklahoma.

Recent work includes Christina Anderson’s the ripple, the wave that carried me home (world premiere co-production Goodman Theatre and Berkeley Rep); The Mousetrap (Hartford Stage); Wait Until Dark (Dorset Theatre Festival); Karen Hartman’s Goldie, Max & Milk (Volt Festival 59e59); Endless Loop of Gratitude with New Neighborhood (New Ohio’s Ice Factory); Lucy Thurber’s Transfers for Audible, MCC, and New York Stage & Film (Off-Broadway Alliance Best New Play Award); When Harry Met Rehab (Chicago’s Greenhouse Theater, Jeff Nominated); Lover Beloved with Suzanne Vega and Duncan Sheik (Alley Theatre); God’s Ear and The Seagull (Juilliard); Kleptocracy by Kenneth Lin (Arena Stage); These Paper Bullets! by Rolin Jones with music by Billie Joe Armstrong (New Neighborhood, Atlantic, Geffen, Yale Rep – Critics Pick Time Out NY, Best Production and Adaptation LA Sage Awards, Time Out Los Angeles, Connecticut Critics Circle Award Best Production and Best Director). Chekhov’s Three Sisters (Studio Theatre / New Neighborhood); Shakespeare’s Much Ado adapted with Ken Lin (Cal Shakes); 3C by David Adjmi and Thurber’s Where We’re Born (Rattlestick); A Little Journey by Rachel Crothers (Mint - Drama Desk nomination Outstanding Revival of a Play); Jones’ The Intelligent Design of Jenny Chow (Atlantic and Yale Rep, Connecticut Critics Circle Award Outstanding Production of a Play). Jackson is the co-producing artistic director of New Neighborhood and currently teaches directing at Brooklyn College. MFA Directing Yale School of Drama. BFA Acting University of the Arts.