For its entire four-production summer season this year, Hackmatack Playhouse in Berwick has tapped women directors – without even really trying. That result came not from any effort to find talented women, per se, but from the theater’s search for talented directors in general, said Hackmatack owner and producer Michael Guptill.

“I don’t want to make a cultural impact statement that women are better than men,” Guptill told the Press Herald. “And it’s not true that these people weren’t busy – it was hard to get meetings with them! We just looked at the best people for each show. I guess you might say that there are a lot of excellent women directors around.”

That statement is backed up by a study last year by the League of Professional Theatre Women, part of an effort it dubbed “Women Count,” which found that the number of women directors in Off-Broadway productions rose to 40 percent during the 2014-2015 season, after a low of 22 percent in 2011-2012. Nine of 22 Off-Broadway theaters in that 2014-2015 season hired women directors for at least half of their productions.

A. Nora Long, who is the associate artistic director at the Lyric Stage Company of Boston and an artistic director of Boston-area fringe company New Exhibition Room, will direct “Noises Off,” which runs at Hackmatack June 17 through July 2. Long is also a founding member of the Small Theatre Alliance of Boston.

The theater’s artist director, Crystal Lisbon, is directing the musical “On the Town,” running July 6 through July 23. For the past seven years, Lisbon has been working in Boston as an actor, choreographer and dialect coach. She has worked as actor, director, and choreographer at Hackmatack, in the Boston area and elsewhere. It was Lisbon who first noticed that the theater’s summer slate was filling up with all female directors.

Alexis Dascoulias, executive director for Maui OnStage in Hawaii, began at Hackmatack as an intern in 1986. She’s directing “Once Upon a Mattress” there, running July 27 through Aug. 13.

“‘Once Upon a Mattress’ is kind of bold and brassy, and Alexis does that kind of show so well, so she was kind of a natural for that,” Guptill said.

And, finally, Genevieve Aichele, the founding artistic director of New Hampshire Theatre Project in Portsmouth, has performed, directed and taught theatre arts nationally and internationally for 40 years. She’s directing “Almost Maine,” showing at Hackmatack Aug. 17 through Sept. 3.”I don’t know when the last time was when we had all male directors, and maybe that’s why this happened, that we’ve always been open to all directors,” Guptill said. “By the way, our children’s theater camp director (Nellie Teeling) is also a woman and is another one of our directors – and I can’t get her to a meeting, either.”

Daphne Howland is a freelance writer based in Portland.