Today's top theatrical talent travels to Dorset to work on brand new plays or to launch brand new collaborations. Connecting artists to the Festival through this development opportunity means our audience can say they were HERE when hits were born.

The Pipeline Series provides writers with fully supported weeklong AEA workshops. Culminating in public staged readings, this interactive program invites our audience to become vital participants in the development of new plays and provides a first look at new plays in consideration for future productions at the Festival and beyond.

The Pipeline Series evolved out of the Festival’s acclaimed New Play Reading Series. Since 2018, the Pipeline has featured plays written by Kate Cortesi, Melissa Ross, Frank Harts, Sofia Alvarez, Matthew Paul Olmos, and Sarah T. Schwab, as well as actors including Treat Williams, Estelle Parsons, and Karen Allen.

ABOUT

Through increased support for the Festival’s new play development efforts, we launched the first Pipeline Series in 2018, offering playwrights fully supported weeklong AEA workshops culminating in public staged readings. Since then, the program has adapted annually to support specific project needs including an online reading of New York Times best-selling author Chris Bohjalian’s play, Wingspan, directed by Lisa Rothe in 2020. In a limited series of matinee performances during the 2021 outdoor Season at Southern Vermont Arts Center, actress/playwright, Heidi Armbruster, developed a new one-woman show, Scarecrow, which debuted on the Festival’s Main Stage in 2022.

In 2006 the Festival began co-sponsoring the Lark Play Development Writers Retreat with Playwright Theresa Rebeck, in which nationally recognized playwrights spent a week in Dorset writing, critiquing, and inspiring one another. The program expanded in 2011 under Artistic Director, Dina Janis, to include The New Play Reading Series, allowing for a writer, director and professional actors to come in for two full days of development and rehearsal prior to a Staged Reading.

2021 Pipeline Series

Scarecrow written and performed by Heidi Armbruster

2020 Pipeline Series

Wingspan by Chris Bohjalian (Digital Presentation)
Directed by Lisa Rothe

2019 Pipeline Series

Panelists by Sofia Alvarez

Three Girls Never Learnt The Way Home by Matthew Paul Olmos

A Stage of Twilight by Sarah T. Schwabb
Starring Karen Alan

2018 Pipeline Series

Is Edward Snowden Single? by Kate Cortesi

A New Play by Melissa Ross
Starring Oscar Award-Winner, Estelle Parsons

Invictus Mingus by Frank Harts
*A co-production with New Neighborhood

A Life in the Theatre (Special Presentation)
Directed by Dina Janis
Starring Treat Williams

2017 New Play Reading Series

A new play by Mona Mansour

A new play by Lauren Yee

There’s Always The Hudson by PAOLA LÁZARO

2016 New Play Reading Series

Employee of the Month by Brian Dykstra

A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen
In a new commissioned translation by Royston Coppenger
Directed by John Gould Rubin

Three Quarter Inches of Sky by Sherry Kramer

2015 New Play Reading Series

The Birthday Boy by Chris Newbound

Cost of Living by Martyna Majok
*2018 Pulitzer Prize-Winner for Drama

A new play by Kate Moira Ryan

2014 New Play Reading Series

Utterly Changed by Nicole Burdette
Starring Kathryn Erbe

Dillingham City by Lucy Thurber and Matt Gould

Zealot by Theresa Rebeck
Directed by John Doyle
Starring Alfre Woodard
*Susan Blackburn Prize finalist

2013 New Play Reading Series

The Purple Lights of Joppa Illinois
written and directed by Adam Rapp

The Bootlegger and the Rabbi’s Daughter, a new musical
by Tajlei Levis and composer John Mercurio.

Rest by Samuel D. Hunter,

This Verse Business/Robert Frost (Special Presentation)
Featuring Emmy Award-Winner Gordon Clapp.

2012 New Play Reading Series

The Undeniable Sound of Right by Laura Eason

Radiance by Cusi Cram

The Bay of Fundy by Sherry Kramer

2011 New Play Reading Series

The Nap by Marisa Smith

Do Something Pretty by Melissa Ross

Naked Influence by Suzanne Bradbeer