Glens Falls, NY — Adirondack Theatre Festival (ATF), the region’s premier professional summer theatre dedicated to new works, has announced initial casting for its 2025 season. The festival brings emerging talent from New York’s Capital Region together with professional performers from Broadway and beyond.
The season opens with a concert presentation of The Village of Vale, a new musical thriller presented by special arrangement with Tony Award-winning producer Jane Dubin (Peter and the Starcatcher) with music by Netflix Animation’s John McGrew and book and lyrics by Jonathan Karpinos and Joseph Varca and direction by Lisa Rothe. After an environmental disaster, a stranger arrives in a secretive village, threatening to reveal long-buried truths. The ATF concert will star Gizel Jiménez (Broadway: Wicked; film: Tick, Tick… Boom!), Lauren Elder (Broadway: Hair, Side Show), Kelvin Moon Loh (Broadway: Beetlejuice, The SpongeBob Squarepants Musical) Jade Litaker (regional: Rent, Les Miserables), as well as local emerging performers Lison Tunick, . The Village of Vale runs June 27 – 29.
The festival continues with Gutenberg! The Musical! by Anthony King and Scott Brown. Helmed by ATF’s Founding Artistic Director Martha Banta (Broadway: Mamma Mia!, Rent), the production stars Coby Getzug (Broadway: The Book of Mormon, Merrily We Roll Along), Sam Harvey (National tour: Rock of Ages, ATF: Mystic Pizza and Traffic and Weather). Gutenberg! The Musical!, hilarious two-person musical about desperate writers pitching a wildly inaccurate show about the inventor of the printing press, runs in a full mainstage production from July 10 – 18.
From July 25 – 27, ATF presents a staged reading of The Last American Newspaper, adapted by former Post Star editor Ken Tingley from his memoir and directed by Marcus Kyd (ATF: Dial ‘M’ for Murder, The Last Wide Open). A small-town newsroom fights to survive as economic, political, and technological pressures transform journalism and community life. The staged reading will feature Nick Baroudi (Television: Law & Order: Organized Crime, Fosse/Verdon), Lise Bruneau (Off-Broadway: The Cherry Orchard), Doug MacKechnie, Elizabeth Pietrangelo, David Girard, and more. The Last American Newspaper was commissioned by ATF with support from the John E. Herlihy Literary Fellowship. The staged reading will be presented in the cabaret of the Charles R. Wood Theater.
The season closes with Queens Girl: Black in the Green Mountains, written by Caleen Sinnette Jennings and directed by Danielle Drakes. In the 1960’s, a young girl graduates from high school in Nigeria and brings new meaning to the “counter-culture” at groovy Bennington College. The one-woman tour-de-force stars Deidre Staples, winner of the Helen Hayes Award for her performance in the world premiere of John Proctor is the Villain at Studio Theatre. Queens Girl: Black in the Green Mountains runs in a mainstage production July 31 – August 6.
Tickets and subscriptions can be purchased at www.atfestival.org or by calling the Wood Theater Box Office at 518-480-4878 (open Tuesday–Saturday, 12–5 PM). Early booking is recommended to secure the best seats.
About Adirondack Theatre Festival
Martha Banta and David Turner, along with a 12-member founding committee, created the Adirondack Theatre Festival in 1993 and presented its first 18-day season of new and contemporary theatre at the French Mountain Playhouse within the Lake George RV Park in 1995. Today ATF is the leading professional theatre in New York’s Capital Region dedicated to emerging artists, new plays and new musicals. Each summer ATF produces a nine-week season at the Wood Theater in Glens Falls. The organization operates under a Small Professional Theatre Agreement with Actors’ Equity Association. The actors seen on the ATF stage, as well as the designers and directors, have worked regularly on and off-Broadway, on television and in movies.
For more information, visit www.atfestival.org.