Tickets for Festival 2024 will be available starting this week through the Town Hall Theater Box Office. 802-382-9222
We are excited to move the Festival to the Black Box Theater at the Hannaford Career Center where we will enjoy the air-conditioned space and the comfortable, fully equipped theater.
The winning plays are:
The Hands of the Mother
by Karina Jutzi
Saturday, August 17 1pm
A modern day retelling of the Demeter and Persephone myth that asks if (and how) we ever leave our Mothers. When Persepone meets "H" at a bar and goes back to his place, she gets entranced by the dark beauty of the underworld and the sexy, troubled alcoholic who lives there. Her Mother meanwhile, goes on a quest with a private detective to find her.
Watershed
by Susan Palmer
Sunday, August 18 1pm
While sheltering in a church during Vermont's 2023 flood, 16-year-old Charlotte grows increasingly anxious about the safety of a friend whose home is flooding. Determined to take action, she enlists the help of a troubled stranger at the shelter and together they drive out into the flood. Her disappearance sparks panic in her mother and sets off a chain of events more frightening than the flood itself. Watershed explores themes of loss, climate anxiety and what it means to grow up in the world that we currently inhabit.
Aristotle's King
by Dana Yeaton & Cole Merrell
Sunday, August 18 4pm
On a hissing summer day in ancient Athens, Aristotle leads his students deep into the forest with an urgent secret: Alexander the Great has died. Now the philosopher must flee for his life -- the victim of shifting political tides. In the fever dream of his escape, Aristotle relives the three tumultuous years he served as tutor to the boy who would conquer the world. As that world reckons with Alexander’s legacy, Aristotle and his students are left to reckon with his own.
And kudos to our wonderful finalists, whose intriguing plays we wish we could have fit in as well.
Under The World Tree by Conor Casey
Hitch by James McLindon
The Lost Tale by Mary Beth McNulty
The Outsider by Mary Pratt
The Agony of Being Seen and Other Trends by Leila Teitelman
Winning Playwright Bio's below:
Susan Palmer
holds an MFA in Theatre Direction from Middlesex University, UK. She is an actor, director, playwright and theatre teacher. She has worked locally with Vermont Stage Company, Vermont Shakespeare Company, Middlebury Acting Company and Lost Nation. She has taught at The University of Vermont, Burlington College and The Flynn Center for the Performing Arts. She is grateful for this opportunity to bring light to her most recent play, Watershed, and hopes to develop it further and eventually realize a full production. She would like to thank her family and friends for all their support of her work.
Karina Cochran
Karina writes everything. Her plays have been produced widely across the United States, published, and named among the Best of Equity Theater. Her poetry, essays, and comedy writing have been featured in various literary magazines both on and offline. The main themes in her work are death, birth, and anything that peers into the void. She currently lives on a small farm in Vermont with her husband and young children.
Dana Yeaton
is a winner of the Heideman Award from the Actors Theatre of Louisville and the “New Voice in American Theatre Award” from the William Inge Theatre Festival. His musical Swing State was a featured selection at the New York Musical Theatre Festival and his play Redshirts, co-produced by Penumbra Theatre in Minneapolis and Round House Theatre in Washington, DC, was nominated for a Charles MacArthur Outstanding New Play award. Dana served as playwright-in-residence at Vermont Stage Company, which produced his plays Jump Cut, Mad River Rising, Midwives, The Big Random, and the musical My Ohio. He is founder of the Vermont Young Playwrights and Oratory Now – a center for training and research in oral expression at Middlebury College.
Colston Merrell
was born in rural Arizona, to a family of Mormon cowboys. As a student at Middlebury College, he won the 2019 Student Playwright award, had a play featured by the college during its 2020 faculty lecture series, and won the 2021 Donald E. Axinn award for distinguished creative writing upon graduation. His plays include Chronic Blush, Honeybee, My Honeybee, and Destroying Angels, which was recently selected as a semi-finalist for the 2024 National Playwrights Conference. At present, Cole lives in New York City, where he spends his time neglecting social obligations and working on various other plays, scripts, and prose pieces.