Located at Goddard | Haybarn Theater | Creative Campus at Goddard
123 Pitkin Road, Plainfield, Vermont 05667
HaSTE incubates new works in dramatic storytelling through staged readings, workshops and full productions. We unite writers, actors, designers, and audiences from Vermont, around the country, and beyond. Initially running a summer season in 2026, HaSTE looks to be a year round fixture in Central Vermont.
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Join us for one play or all three in our HaSTE ‘26 Summer Season. Tickets and packages available!
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In the spirit of Goddard, GIDA is rooted in experimentation, practical learning, and building the relationships that sustain us as individuals and in community.
Dramatic storytelling - in theater and film - is a community event. GIDA provides the time and space essential to develop the stories, artists, and audiences or our time - each a critical component to the reciprocal exchange that takes place. At every stage - reading of plays in development, professional intensives and teacher trainings, conservatory culminations, or full HaSTE productions - the audience is invited.
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The stories, artists, and audiences we nurture then bring our community to others, and still others back to ours to incubate with us.
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Vermont is rich in artistic community and GIDA is proud to join and collaborate with entities across the state.
Will you join us?
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gida
DO
We teach the craft of acting, prioritizing artistic freedom and inspiring courage in creativity, rooted in the actors ability to suspend our disbelief by living truthfully under the given imaginary circumstances. With love and rigor, in the Green Mountains of Central Vermont and taught by preeminent teachers and practitioners, we will nurture the next generation of acting artists, preparing them to be dynamically responsive to the world around us and the moment we are living in.
Short Intensives Launching Fall ‘ 26 | Deep dives into a particular practice or technique. Usually 1-4 weeks in length and open to seasoned professionals, newer students to the craft, and teachers in training.
Certificate based Conservatory Fall ‘27 | Two (2) 10-week semesters, opened to 20 participants, teachers in training, seasoned professionals, and newer students of the craft.
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For application and general information, please click below or email us at assist@goddarddrama.com.
THE
FOUNDERS
Artistic Directors David Warshofsky and Kristina Lear bring together 60 years of experience in theater, film, and television, specializing in the development and production of new works. Individually and together, they are known for building rigorous, collaborative artistic
communities and for incubating bold, emotionally precise storytelling.
Together, Kristina and David bring people together to work with precision, curiosity, and care — creating spaces where artists can play boldly and tell stories with love and rigor. In 2013, they initiated HaSTE, bringing a collaboration between USC and Goddard College to the Haybarn through the Goddard Arts Initiative.
In 2024, they relocated their family from Los Angeles to Montpelier, Vermont, with the vision of building something expansive, enduring, and rooted in community.
David Warshofsky
Artistic Director
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For the last 15 years, David has evolved the MFA Acting program at the USC School of Dramatic Arts and currently is a full professor and Director of the program that began in 2006 under the stewardship of Andy Robinson.
As an actor, his professional acting career began as an intern at The La Jolla Playhouse. He made his Broadway debut in Neil Simon’s Biloxi Blues. Additional Broadway credits include Carousel at Lincoln Center (The Nicholas Hytner revival that launched the career of Audra Ann MacDonald) and the inauspicious On the Waterfront (which opened and closed in a week). Most recently David appeared as Weston (called “ferocious" by the New Yorker Magazine) in the 2019 Signature Theatre revival of Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class.
Other stage credits include Blue Window at MTC, Romance Language at Playwright’s Horizons, the national tours of Biloxi Blues and South Pacific and David Mamet’s The Old Neighborhood at the Geffen Playhouse. He originated the role of “Gottfried Swetts” in Tony Kushner’s A Bright Room Called Day and collaborated with Tony to direct the premiere of the reboot in 2018 at USC.
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Film credits include Blonde, There Will Be Blood, The Master, Lincoln, Beatriz at Dinner, The Future, Captain Phillips, Now You See me (1&2) Last Exit To Brooklyn, Born On The Fourth Of July, and the Taken films (1&3). Television credits include Barry, Ordinary Joe, Scandal, Fear Of The Walking Dead, and numerous Law & Orders.
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David is an NYU Graduate Acting Alumn.
Kristina Lear
Artistic Director
Kristina was born and raised in Vermont; her parents met in the dining hall on the Goddard campus and worked on productions together in the Haybarn Theater. Kristina’s first artistic home was as an acting member of the Circle Repertory Theater LAB in NYC, often shepherding plays from first reading through production and working with writers such as Paula Vogel, John Bishop. Darrah Cloud, and Lanford Wilson and directors Anne Bogart, Michael Warren Powell, and Jeff Zinn. Kristina co-created the series The System, an ensemble drama about the Department of Children and Families, created In The Pines - a half hour drama about the aftermath of an assault on a college campus told from the perspectives of both people involved, and wrote and directed the award winning film Cough Drop. Kristina was a film curator for the Green Mountain Film Festival and co-created and taught ACTOUT, a writing, acting, and performance program for incarcerated teenagers. ActOut was a collaboration between Street Poets and The Echo Theater Company in Los Angeles where Kristina was an acting member and served as co-artistic director.
In addition to her artistic work, Kristina spent the past 11 years organizing and on staff with Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ). She developed grassroots campaigns and actions that include contributing to the cancellation of a 3.5 billion dollar jail expansion plan and winning subpoena power for civilian oversight of the LA Sheriff's Department, flipping Georgia in ‘20, defeating a constitutional abortion ban in Kentucky '22, and electing Zohran Mamdani as NYC's mayor in '25. These campaigns were rooted in 1-1 conversations, primarily in white communities, that engaged people directly with their own stories around race and class.
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Kristina is a graduate of Sanford Meisner’s The Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theater and AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women, where she was a fellow and grant recipient.