Vermont Guides

Dorset Theatre Festival's mission is to create bold, innovative, and authentic theatre that engages a diverse, multi-generational community, and economically diverse region: enlightening, entertaining, and inspiring our audience through the celebration of great plays. We aim to redefine the landscape of theatre by presenting thought-provoking productions drawn from the new and classic canon, as well as through the development of new plays, new audiences, and new artists for the future of American theater. We produce theatre that matters.

Our track record of providing industry-recognized support and development opportunities to artists, as well as the world-class theater we produce at the historic Dorset Playhouse each summer, makes Dorset Theatre Festival a national resource and a cherished local treasure for the people who live, work, and vacation here.

Over the past decade the Dorset Theatre Festival has become a national incubator for new play development, committed to nurturing new plays and playwrights who are innovative, authentic and celebrate our common humanity. The Festival has taken huge steps forward in living our mission to create bold, innovative, and authentic theatre, and in any given year, the Festival is developing more than a dozen new plays. As the Festival grows, we build our internal capacity for robustly supporting the production of World Premieres, as well as Regional Premieres and second and third productions of new works. 

Dorset Theatre Festival is a nonprofit organization supported by individuals like you who believe that live theatre enriches our experiences as a community and connects us to what makes us human.