2027 Bake Off
I Expect you to Die by James Best
James Bond admits to Goldfinger that he is depressed, leading to an unexpected conversation and an even more unlikely friendship.
Safe by Alyssa Borelli
A community engagement program assistant giving out gun safes on a college campus has an thoughtful interaction with a young veteran who leaves with a new understanding of what it means to be safe.
You Smell Extremely Terrible by Lizzy Cenicola
Two pre-historic Bushwick hipsters carry groceries home.
February 38th by Barclay Sherwood
A young woman and her friend are stuck in a time loop, repeating the same day over and over again. On this day, the friend decides to finally confess their love for her, which has the potential to change the fabric of their universe forever.
Busters by Alex Raymond Ross
When two kids go ghost-hunting, they make a completely unexpected discovery.
Meeting Request by Melissa Sarno
Set in an afterlife comprised of 10 minute meetings with various people from your life, two near-strangers find a profound connection with each other.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS
Introducing the 2027 playwrights and the ingredients they incorporated into their play.
James Best is an Emmy-nominated tv writer and Cannes-winning activist from Brooklyn who moved to the beautiful Hudson Valley. He has written and developed tv comedies for NBC, Dreamworks, Nickelodeon, and more. He's best known for his guerrilla protest art #NoKidsInCages. His cat August Marmalade Wilson edits all his work.
Ingredients: A promise, a sneeze, pandemonium and a bag of spilled groceries
Alyssa Borelli is a Connecticut playwright exploring societal issues through human connection. Her play Coloring received a regional honor from the American College Theater Festival. A three-time Marist University Playwrights’ Festival winner, her work has been produced by the International Human Rights Art Festival, Schreiber Shorts, and The Ritz Theatre Company.
INGREDIENTS: A promise, a poorly remembered song, pandemonium, a trampoline
Alex Raymond Ross is a NYC-based actor/singer/writer, recently seen at HVS as Marius in Les Misérables. Credits: Invisible (The York Theatre)*, The (Disaster) Marathon of 1904 (Stagedoor’s New Next Now)*, Hairspray, Forever Plaid (The Little Theatre on the Square), Billy Elliot (Hangar Theatre) BFA: Ithaca College. Insta @alexander_raymond_ross *denotes readings
INGREDIENTS: A sneeze, déjà vu, & a promise
Melissa Sarno is the author of acclaimed middle grade novels Just Under the Clouds and A Swirl of Ocean. Based in Cortlandt Manor, NY, she is also a Sustainable Arts Foundation Awards Finalist, a freelance editor, and a script writer for children's podcasts. She is currently at work on her next novel.
INGREDIENTS: A sneeze, a poorly remembered song, a promise
Barclay Travis is a queer theatre-maker in every sense of the word. He takes much inspiration from his lifetime of living in the Hudson Valley, his love of game design, and his passion for the supernatural and paranormal. He is also something akin to a paladin, oathbound to weird kids everywhere.
INGREDIENTS: Galileo, deja vu, & a promise
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.
2026 Bake-Off Ingredients (Please incorporate at least THREE of these in your play)
A promise
A bag of spilled groceries
A deluge
A poorly remembered song
Galileo
A sneeze
Pandemonium
Deja vu
A Trampoline
Viva la revolucion!
Please submit your 10-minute plays by 11:59pm on Wednesday, October 14:
We are so excited to see what you all create!
HOW DO I GET INVOLVED?
The 2026 playwrighting workshops have now wrapped up. With more than 60 plays submitted to this year’s Bake-Off, we’re looking forward to sharing these new stories with audiences at our public readings on November 14 and 15.
Stay tuned for details on you can get yourself on the invite list!
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.
Community Bake-Off Frequently Asked Questions
What is a Bake-Off?
Created by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paula Vogel, the Bake-Off is a communal writing event in which writers are given a random list of “ingredients” to incorporate into a play (for example: a kitchen sink, a front porch, and a withheld secret) to help inspire creativity and give writers permission to play. Hudson Valley community members are invited to submit short plays to be considered as part of the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Community Bake-Off. Between 5-7 of these plays will be selected to be performed by professional actors at Hudson Valley Shakespeare on November 15 & 16.
Who is eligible to participate?
Anyone who has attended any of the bake-off workshops is eligible to submit a play.
When are submissions due?
Play submissions should be submitted via Google Form as a Microsoft Word, Google Drive, or PDF by 11:59pm on Wednesday, October 14. You may submit your plays here:
They will then be reviewed by a team of readers.
When will I find out if my play has been selected?
We’ll notify you by Friday, October 23.
When will I need to be available if my play is selected?
The performance will be held at Hudson Valley Shakespeare on November 14 & 15. You will also be invited to a rehearsal prior to the performances to give feedback to the actors and director.
How will I know what the ingredients are?
Our recipe for this year will be announced on Wednesday, September 30. You should include at least three of these ingredients in your play.
How long does my play have to be?
You should aim for around 10 pages, but if your play is a bit longer or shorter, that is okay.
What information do I need to include with my submission?
On the first page, be sure to include the title, your name, and your phone number and email address. You should also include the setting (time and place) and a list of characters and short descriptions (including age or age range, and any other basic information you think is important to understand your play). For example: HAROLD – male, 50s. Jeannie’s father.
How do you format a play?
Click the button below for a sample scene format.
Have questions?
Write Christine Scarfuto: BakeOff@hvshakespeare.org.
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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!
