ABOUT BAKE-OFF
For over a decade, Hudson Valley Shakespeare has been a welcoming home for new playwrights, with a commitment to supporting fresh voices in theater. Since its inception more than 1,000 community members have participated in free playwriting workshops, and nearly 500 plays were submitted, of which, 65 plays were selected and read by professional actors.
Created by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel, the Bake-Off is a communal writing exercise that invites members of the public to attend free playwriting workshops hosted in libraries across the area. Participating writers are then assigned a random list of “ingredients” of which three must be incorporated into a play (for example: a kitchen sink, a front porch, and a withheld secret). The goal is to help inspire creativity and give writers permission to play.
For our 11th annual Community Bake-Off, our play ingredients are being selected by award-winning composer and theater artist Heather Christian, who most recently composed a five-part score performed by a community choir at HVS’s Highland Lights. The public readings of the final selected plays will be directed by Catie Davis.
Playwriting workshops are hosted in September, with a public reading in November.
2026 THEME
This year's theme, Revolution, is inspired by Shakespeare's line from King Lear: "The wheel is come full circle" (5.3). Produced this summer as part of HVS' 2026 Season, and arriving as America celebrates its 250th anniversary, we're using the theme Revolution in the broadest sense. It isn't just a political word. It's what happens every time something turns: when a wheel completes its rotation and lands, somehow, both back where it began, changed. That's the definition we're working with: cycles, upheaval, reinvention, return. Wide enough to hold history and metaphor at once, and open enough for every writer to find their own way in.
HOW DO I GET INVOLVED?
Hudson Valley Shakespeare offers a series of free playwriting workshops led by Acting Director of the MFA playwriting program at Hunter College, Christine Scarfuto. All workshop participants are then eligible to submit a ten-minute short play to be considered. Six of these plays are then selected and will be read by professional actors as part of an invited public reading in November.
2026 Community Bake-Off Schedule
Saturday, September 19
10:30 AM–12:30 PM
Creative Era Creative Space
Peekskill, NY
Saturday, September 19
2:00–4:00 PM
Julia L. Butterfield Memorial Library
Cold Spring, NY
Sunday, September 20
10:00 AM–12:00 PM
Virtual Workshop
via Zoom
Saturday, September 26
10:30 AM–12:30 PM
The Warner Library
Tarrytown, NY
Saturday, September 26
2:00–4:00 PM
Desmond-Fish Public Library
Garrison, NY
Sunday, September 27
1:00-3:00 PM
Jacob Burns Film Center
Pleasantville, NY
Public Staged Readings
Saturday, November 14, 2026 at 7:00 PM
Sunday, November 15, 2026 at 2:00 PM
Producing Team
Sean McNall
Producer
Before joining HVSF’s administrative staff in 2014, Sean spent 12 years as a member of The Pearl Theatre Resident Acting Company in New York City, where he appeared in over forty productions, receiving an OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence of Performance and a Drama Desk Award. His recent productions include Terrence McNally’s And Away We Go, Shaw’s You Never Can Tell, and Henry IV, Part One, directed by Davis McCallum. He and his wife, Abigail, have a wonderful son named Declan. Sean is a member of the Haldane School Board.
Christine Scarfuto
Associate Producer | Literary Manager
Christine Scarfuto has been the Producer of the Hudson Valley Shakespeare’s Bake Off for the past eight years, and is the Director of the Rita and Burton Goldberg MFA Playwriting Program at Hunter College. She is a dramaturg and producer with over a decade of experience in new play development. She was the Literary Manager of Long Wharf Theatre from 2015-2019, where she oversaw a robust new play development program. She has worked as a dramaturg with Second Stage Theater, McCarter Theatre, Signature Theatre, Lark Play Development Center, Playwrights Center, Clubbed Thumb, Playwrights Realm, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and the Kennedy Center among others. Christine was educated entirely in public schools including the University of Iowa, where she received her MFA in Dramaturgy.
CATIE DAVIS
2026 Director
Catie Davis is a New York City based director of contemporary musical theater. She is interested in deeply empathetic, surprisingly comedic, and uniquely theatrical stories. Catie has worked in theaters across NYC and around the world. Recent directing includes: Indigo (UK Premier - Leicester Curve), The Ghost of John McCain (Off Broadway), Forget Me Not (Riverside Theatre), and The Magnificent Seven (World Premiere - Flint Rep). She is the international associate director for Beetlejuice (London, Broadway, Australia, North American Tours). Other associate work includes Moulin Rouge (Broadway), Company (Broadway, 2020), Baby J (Netflix), Ben Platt Live from Radio City Music Hall (Netflix), and has worked at The Public Theater, Roundabout Theatre Company, and Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. She is a 2018 Manhattan Theatre Club Directing Fellow, a Lincoln Center Directors Lab alum, and a proud member of SDC.
She is drawn to the theater for the singularity of live performance; that magical moment when we go from being a bunch of strangers in a room to one audience. The majority of Catie’s work is directing and developing new contemporary musicals. She believes music is a universal language that can make theater more accessible, and is interested in bridging the gap between pop culture and theater. She actively seeks out new collaborations and opportunities to use theater to bring communities together into a world of empathy and imagination. Head to the “News” page to hear about her latest endeavor.
Artist Selecting the Ingredients
Heather Christian
HEATHER CHRISTIAN is a 2025 MacArthur Fellow, Drama Desk and two-time Obie Award-winning composer/performer making music-centered shows and rituals. She is a 2021 Richard Rodgers Award winner, 2025 Larson Grant winner, 2022 Stephen Schwartz Outstanding New Composer awardee and Sundance Institute Time Warner Fellow. She has been given the Mississippi Governor’s Arts Award from her home state for excellence in musical composition. Named a current resident at the Signature Theater in New York, many of her shows, past and present, can be seen in the coming years. Recent composing/performing credits include her own work Oratorio for Living Things (Signature Center NYC, 2025; Ars Nova, 2022), Terce: A Practical Breviary (HERE Arts Center and Prototype), Animal Wisdom (The Bushwick Starr; now a motion picture, with a new production at the Signature Theater in 2026), I Am Sending You the Sacred Face (Theater in Quarantine/YouTube — Vulture’s Top Theater Experience of 2020) and Prime: A Practical Breviary (Playwrights Horizons Soundstage — IndieWire’s #1 Podcast Episode of 2020), in addition to being a lead artist on devised works Mission Drift (National Theatre London) and The World Is Round (Brooklyn Academy of Music). She has been tapped to adapt music and lyrics for the beloved children’s novel A Wrinkle in Time with book writer Lauren Yee. Often a collaborator with dance, her work has recently been seen in various pieces by Jane Comfort (Jane Comfort and Company) and Matthew Neenan (Ailey). She has released 13 records, owns and operates her own recording studio in Beacon, N.Y., and can be seen regularly in concert halls and dive bars as Heather Christian & the Arbornauts.
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Highland Lights
Community-generated procession of giant lanterns across Hudson Valley Shakespeare’s landscape. Join this year's event through lantern-making workshops, participating in a community choir, and more!
Enrichment Events
Lively pre-show conversations, music, and adoptable rescue dogs. Join us for one of our free events throughout the season!
