Join us Tuesday nights in July and August for a special series of informal, community play readings. Each evening features a different thought-provoking play, explored aloud in a casual, collaborative setting designed for discussion and reflection—not performance.

The venues are accessible, with parking and restrooms on site. We welcome you to bring cooked or cold dishes and salads and desserts so we can nourish our bodies as we nourish our theatrical souls. We welcome everyone regardless of their dietary restrictions, their ability to purchase food, or their ability take time to cook food to share.  We also welcome chocolate bars, bags of chips, carrots, a bottle of juice or soda, clementines, grapes, crackers and cheese, etc. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BRING SOMETHING TO SHARE TO BE ABLE TO PARTICIPATE.

Each gathering will run approximately 2.5 to 3 hours, offering plenty of time for shared reading, conversation, and community building. Whether you’re a longtime theater lover or totally new to play readings, all are warmly invited to join in this celebration of collective strength and shared voices.

RSVP & Reading Opportunities

Please RSVP if you plan to attend, and let us know if you’d like to read a part. We warmly welcome both familiar and new faces and voices to Vermont Theater Company (VTC)! Reading roles will be offered with care and consideration by the artistic director to support a safe, inclusive, and engaging experience for all participants.

No prior experience is needed—just bring your curiosity and an open heart. We look forward to gathering in community to honor these vital stories.

RSVP: https://forms.gle/Rnwn9iyqxvWXQoM36

This reading series features plays that explore mature themes including violence, oppression, death, sexuality, and strong language. While these works are rich in meaning and social relevance, they may not be suitable for young children or those sensitive to these topics. We encourage attendees to consider their comfort level and needs before participating.

Schedule

July 21 (MEMORIAL PARK) hosted by Jessica Iris

Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play by Anne Washburn.

A celebration of theater and storytelling - to kick off our potluck playreading series. It examines how stories evolve to center our values and struggles. The script is a dark comedy that gives a new perspective to and role for pop culture after a global apocalypse. Over three acts spanning 75 years, it follows survivors who preserve their humanity by reconstructing episodes of The Simpsons from memory.

July 28 (MEMORIAL PARK) hosted by Ben Stockman

Fefu and her Friends by Mariá Irene Fornés

A comedic and menacing piece of magical realism about a group of well-to-do New England women in 1935 who hold a get-together to plan a presentation for their education-based charity. Light on plot, the play focuses more on interpersonal dynamics between the characters and the underlying existential crises each of them face that constantly threaten to bubble to the surface. Perhaps most well-known for its unique structure, the middle act splits into four perspectives of the same 10 minutes in different rooms of the house, as the audience likewise splits into four groups and each experiences the sequence in a different order. Today, as the societal influence of anti-feminist and gender essentialist voices becomes artificially boosted by controversy-driven online algorithms, I think plays that explore the nightmarishness of restrictive gender binaries become more and more important; Fefu is an absolutely striking example of such a play.

August 8 (MEMORIAL PARK) hosted by Alex Hacker

Heldenplatz is the last play written by Austrian novelist and playwright Thomas Bernhard

It remains his most caustic and controversial. The play takes place in the wake of the suicide of a mathematics professor and explores and exposes the residual fascism that still plagues Austrian culture decades after World War II. By turns darkly comic and bitter, and featuring long provocative monologues and tirades filled with irrationality and neorosis, the play caused an uproar of controversy and scandal when it premiered in 1988. It is in essence a tragedy on the level of a culture and a nation, and I chose it in the hope that it offers us a true sense of tragic catharsis, and hopefully a few uncomfortable laughs in the midst of its pitch-black satire.

August 15 (MEMORIAL PARK) hosted by Eden Gorst

Woke Frankenstein is a satirical dark comedy by Brattleboro's own Robyn Jensen-Tode.

Traditionalist housewife Lily's life is interrupted when her creator, a politically active mad scientist, demands to take up residence in her home alongside her conservative "Anti-Frankenstein" husband. As her creator gains more control over her life, Lily must figure out what kind of life she really wants to lead.

August 22 (MEMORIAL PARK) hosted by Kay Beckett

Hay Fever (1924) is a comedic theatrical work penned by the famous British playwright Noël Coward.

Located in an English country house on the banks of the River Thames, it intertwines outrageous antics, slapstick humor, satire, and a comedy of manners to create a distinctive representation of a whimsical and lovable English family in the early 1920s. Each of the four members of the Bliss family has extended an invitation to a guest for the weekend at their estate, setting the scene for a series of boisterous misunderstandings that reveal an unspoken yet universal truth: No family is truly normal.