PRESS

Rutland Herald

by Jim Lowe

When Dina Janis became Dorset Theatre Festival's new artistic director this season, she inherited one of Vermont's most venerable summer professional theaters, but one whose image in recent years had been diminished by lackluster programming and financial difficulties. Instead of reining in artistically, though, Janis is banking on artistic excellence and going for the gusto—including a world premiere. Janis, a veteran actor, director, administrator and teacher with ties to both Vermont and New York City theater, may have the tools to renew Dorset's reputation. She has impressive theater credentials, but she is also a local resident who has been teaching drama at Bennington College for 10 years. An original member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, she is a member of New York's Actors Studio and Labyrinth Theater Company. "The legacy of the theater was still alive," Janis said of her arrival at Dorset. "There was a bit of a lack of vision in the transition from Jill Charles' death to this point, but the quality of the work was very good ..." She recognized the nature of the challenge. "The potential was unbelievable—but getting it from potential to realization is an enormous task and one that takes the kind of commitment Jill had," Janis said. "I think it needs a year-round presence; it needs somebody who's really here, who's involved in the community and developing ideas—not for just three months out of the year. "They're getting excited about it, and the (production) team that's coming in for it is fantastic—so you can't beat that," Janis said. "I'm really happy I made that choice because it's reflective of who I am—and I think people will find it exciting."

Bennington Banner

by Telly Halkias

There is one word that best descirbes Dorset Theatre Festival's new artistic director Dina Janis, and this is "genuine.: One got that impression immediately on hearing her introduce the kickoff play to DTF's 35th season, Craig Wright's [Pulitzer Prize] nominated offering, "The Pavilion." That sense only grew when watching the performance, directed by Giovanna Sardelli. Janis' signature is all over the play and the playhouse, and this bodes well for theatergoers who have patronizd DTF for years, only to see it fluctuate in more recent years. If "The Pavilion" is any indication, then DFTF is on its way back. Often described as a "modern day 'Our Town'" in its earlier performances, Thornton Wilder would have found much to like in this produciton. THe setting is 1999 in the fictional town of Pine City, Minn., at The Pavilion, an old dance ahll, during Peter (Jeremiah Wiggins) and Kari's (Sarah Kate Jackson) 20th high school reunion. They are joined by the narrator (Antoinette LaVecchia), and a host of other classmates, also plated by LaVecchia. Back by such a strong cast, Debra Booth's set design was both functional and whimsical - both as a locale, and a backdrop to our own consciences. Costumes by Barbara A. Bell, lighting by Michael Giannitti, and sound by Jane Shaw were perfect complements to Janis' burst out of the gates as DTF's shepherd. That herald is all about time, an how challenging it can be to get a firm grip on it. The past is gone, and the present is but a moment. All that seems to remain is hope for the future. Judging by this play's execution, we can finally hope that Dorset Theatre Festival has finally found its Muse in Janis.

The Boston Globe

by Sandy MacDonald

Dina Janis, the new artistic director of the Dorset Theatre Festival (a 35-year-old professional program ensconced in a 1929 barn theater), is connected. In the past decade, while hosting several summer play-development intensives for New York's prestigious Labyrinth Theatre Company at Bennington College, where she teaches, she helped to nurture scores of the most promising voices in contemporary theater. As a result, DTF's first season under her aegis will culminate in August with an A-list cast presenting the world premiere of "The Novelist'' by Theresa Rebeck, whose career took off with "Bad Dates'' and whose new plays tend to rocket to Broadway. But that's off in the future. Right now, DTF is kicking off all traces of straw hat torpor with a thrilling production of Craig Wright's "The Pavilion,'' an ambitious chamber work that debuted off-Broadway to considerable acclaim in 2005. As effective as that production was, director Giovanna Sardelli finds new depth — and readier humor — in this quirky study of time and regret, and the seemingly irreconcilable differences between the two. The scene — Debra Booth's graceful yet grand set evokes it perfectly — is a century-old lakeside dance hall in Pine City, Minn., where the high school class of '79 has gathered to celebrate its 20th reunion. A victim of civic ambition, the pavilion is due to be burned down at the close of the festivities to make way for a concrete rock-concert venue. Peter, an alum who made good (he's a psychologist in the big city now, though his crowning achievement amid this crowd may be merely the fact that he managed to get out of town), is appalled at his peers' patent disregard for the past. In fact, Peter (played with palpable sincerity and superb timing by Jeremiah Wiggins) is actually on a mission to resurrect the past — in general, and his own personal past in particular. As gradually becomes clear, he never got over the first love of his life, former classmate Kari (Sarah Kate Jackson), whom he abandoned way back then in a family way. Who among us has not wondered about the road — or potential spouse — not taken? Wright wraps this fairly run-of-the-mill situation in clouds of cosmic musing, delivered by a godlike yet impish omniscient narrator, who pops in repeatedly to play former classmates meddling in Peter and Kari's situations and/or undergoing their own romantic crises. In this hugely demanding role, Antoinette LaVecchia is a powerhouse, pumping plenty of excitement into Wright's somewhat windy take on the miraculous circumstances that conspire to bring two lovers together (the text is off to a leisurely start with the observation: "This is the way the universe begins . . .''), while rendering the hijinks with relish. Particularly juicy is LaVecchia's incar nation of a venomous wronged wife, whose advice to Kari is, "Never forgive!'' Jackson plays Kari with the high-strung edginess of an adolescent (hands flapping with angst) crossed with an adult's considered resignation: She married the local golf pro, who "rescued'' her from small-town opprobrium only to bore her into a kind of living death. Kari is well aware of the metaphorical import of her own job, standing guard over the safety-deposit boxes in the basement of the local bank. And yet, in Jackson's sensitive portrayal, glimpses of the love-transported young girl manage to shine through. In Kari's face, Peter reminisces, he once saw "the beauty of everything . . . the whole universe.'' Indeed, he sees it there still. The new team at the Dorset Theatre Festival gleans fresh insight from Wright's challenging yet ultimately brilliant script.

Playbill.com

by Theresa Rebeck

Somebody told me a couple weeks ago that summer stock is dying. He made it sound like one of the stepping stones to the inevitable end of culture. No one wants theater anymore, so of course they don't want summer theater, especially in a recession. Summer stock is a big old lumbering dinosaur which just can't survive. And then fiction will die and poetry is already dead.

That is not my experience up here in Dorset, Vermont. The Dorset Theater Festival presents a four-show season in one of those great old barn theaters, starting in late June and running through the end of August. It fell upon hard times the past few seasons, which had to do with a myriad of different factors which no one really wants to talk about because people here aren't all that interested in wallowing in past mistakes; they're more interested in figuring out how to make things work. Honestly, Vermont reminds me of China. Everybody is so pragmatic.

So this year, the Dorset Theater Festival hired Dina Janis to take over as Artistic Director. Dina lives in Dorset with her husband and two sons. When she was a kid, she grew up in the Chicago Playboy Mansion because her father, who was a musician, played the Playboy circuit and he dragged everyone along with him, and in between gigs that's where they crashed and then finally they just ended up living there. Then, when she hit high school, Dina studied with Barbara Greener, along with Gary Sinise and Jeff Perry, and they started producing theater in church basements out in Highland Park, and that led to starting their own company, which they called Steppenwolf. Then Dina decided it was time to go to New York to study on her own, which she did. The last few years she's been teaching at Bennington College and hosting New York theater companies like LAByrinth, who come up and work with her and her students during the summer.

And then Dina took over the Dorset Theater Festival, and now they're doing new plays.

This is all a true story. I didn't make any of that up. And now Dina's strange genius for making things happen is taking over Dorset. There are banners all over the Dorset Green announcing that it is the Theater Festival's 35th Anniversary Season. An arts writer came out from the Boston Globe to cover the opening of their first show. They have a tapas bar and live music on Fridays and Saturdays, before the performances. (My son Cooper played; he did great.) And now I have six exceptional actors throwing themselves into one my plays so that we can do it in that beautiful old theater in three weeks.

And p.s. my friend Jayne Benjulian just came up for a week to stay in my guest house and work on her book of poetry.

The dinosaurs are making a lot of noise in Dorset. Plus, it's 72 and sunny.