The Island theatre group ArtFarm is gearing up for a groundbreaking third season, with a summer lineup true to its mission to collaborate, educate and innovate.

First up is the second annual New Writers, New Plays festival of readings by emerging playwrights, which is a coproduction between ArtFarm and Vineyard Arts Project. Playwrights, directors and cast will be in residence for four weeks developing scripts, and will present readings of the plays on July 7, 8 and 9 at the Vineyard Arts Project at 215 Upper Main street in Edgartown.

Resident playwrights will be:

Lucas Papaelias and Deborah Smith with Pyramidica: Songs a Freedom, directed by Lou Moreno. This show comes from New York city, where it is being developed by ArsNova. Broadway actress Jenni Barber (25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Cactus Flower, Electric Company) will star in this rock musical about pyramid schemes.

Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins with Appropriate, Eric Ting directing. This award-winning playwright comes to the festival straight from the Emerging Writers Group at The Public in New York city and fresh off a Fullbright in Berlin.

Tanya Saracho with an untitled script that is the second play in a trilogy that has been comissioned by the Goodman in Chicago. The first installment of the trilogy, El Nogalar, opened there last month. The trilogy explores life on the border between Texas and Mexico, and stars Raul Castillo, Sandra Delgado and Ricardo Gutierrez. Lisa Portes will be directing.

Again this will be a pay-what-you-can event. ArtFarm artistic director Brooke Hardman: “The Island community [has]a chance to see plays that may be on Broadway next season before any other audience, and for the price of what they have in their pocket.”

In July ArtFram teams up with the Yard, Vineyard Arts Project and Pig Pen Theatre Company for a two-week run of the original play The Old Man and the Old Moon, July 14 to 24 at the Yard, on Middle Road in Chilmark.

Pig Pen has been called “the future of ensemble theatre in America,” by Company One in Boston, where they make their regional theatre debut this June performing The Mountain Song, a show that was heavily workshopped, and critically acclaimed, here on the Vineyard last summer.

On August 11 and 12, ArtFarm and Featherstone welcome Actors’ Shakespeare Project, who will remount a selection of scenes from Cymbeline, with open conversations between cast, director, theatre luminaries and audience.