Ready for the return of Dog Days? Not referring to just the hot summer months here, but to Dog Days Theatre, which will present its second season at the Cook Theatre starting July 12.

“Our first season of Dog Days was wonderfully successful,” said Greg Leaming, producer of Dog Days Theatre and director of the FSU/Asolo Conservatory, in a press release. “We are all so happy to make this project an annual event...something that will satisfy an intelligent, sophisticated audience looking for lighter fare suitable to the dog days of summer in Florida.”

Dog Days, which began last summer with productions of Relatively Speaking and Double Indemnity, is an initiative of the Conservatory, which allows current students in the MFA program there to work alongside Conservatory grads and professional actors.

This season brings to the stage the late British playwright Joe Orton’s farce What the Butler Saw, centered on the sexual shenanigans at an exclusive private mental health clinic. Characters include a philandering psychiatrist (played by David Kortemeier), his attractive would-be secretary (Jillian Cicalese), his suspicious wife (Urbanite Theatre’s co-artistic director Summer Dawn Wallace), a health inspector (Ned Averill-Snell), a policeman (Wes Tolman) and a randy bellhop (Nicholas Beckett). Show dates are July 12-29.

Following Butler will be a modern adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher of Henry James’ classic ghost story, The Turn of the Screw, about a Victorian-era governess caring for two children who begins to experience supernatural events. Are they real, or in her mind? No cast announced yet for this chiller; dates are Aug. 9-26.

For tickets to Dog Days Theatre, call 351-8000 or visit asolorep.org.