It’s six days before opening night of the Vineyard’s first production of Rent — that’s about 8,000 minutes, for fans of the Broadway musical’s company song Seasons of Love, which poses the question, how do you measure a year, and answers it with the surprisingly catchy refrain, “five-hundred, twenty-five-thousand, six-hundred minutes..”
The jazz, funk and blues guitar of Jon Zeeman and Friends will kick off Musical Mondays at Featherstone Center for the Arts on June 28.
It’s BYO lawn chair, blanket and picnic basket to the greens of the arts campus on Barnes Road, not far from the blinker in Oak Bluffs, each Monday evening from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Admission is $7 for adults or $5 with Our Island Club card; children are free.
Calling kids aged 8 to 18 who can sing and/or act: it’s audition time for the Imp production of Bittersweet, a musical that includes many singing some non-singing roles. Bittersweet is written by Ross Mihalko and Donna Swift, with lyrics by Ross Mihalko and music by Brian Weiland — the creators of Bears Beware, Goldilocks Is in Your Town; Waking Beauty; Bluebeard; and The Tall Tale Trilogy.
A grand puppet parade down Main street, Vineyard Haven on Saturday will be a highlight of the fourth annual weekend-long Martha’s Vineyard Puppet Festival. The parade will begin at 5 p.m., but anyone who would like to join the parade can bring a puppet friend and meet at Katharine Cornell Theatre at 4:30, or come at 3 p.m. to a free puppet-making event and make a parade puppet to follow the giant puppets — Mother Earth, Mother Ocean and Father Sky.
Ben Taylor will play live at the Island Theatre on Circuit avenue in Oak Bluffs on Wednesday, August 4, from 6 to 8 p.m. Doors open at 5:30.
The concert is a benefit for the capital campaign for the Island’s Waldorf preschool, Plum Hill School. Tickets are $30 general admission, or $100 which includes an after-show party at Island Cohousing’s common house. Ninety per cent of the ticket price is tax deductible.
Dan Waters, former West Tisbury poet laureate, guitarist, writer and all-around nice guy, will perform his guitar poems at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 17 at Che’s Lounge in Vineyard Haven, a part of the ongoing Island Voices poetry series.
What do you get when you cross the bad boy of downtown dance with Carmen Miranda, Lenny Bruce, and a whole bunch of hard working bodies? Another tour de force show from the Yard, of course. This weekend the artistic love child of Patricia Hoffbauer and Mark Dendy, entitled Para-dice, pushes the boundaries of dance, theatre and performance.
The Vineyard Playhouse will transform into Spoon in the Moon Coffeehouse on Friday, April 2, with the assistance of a musical trio whose harmonies and arrangements inject new life into familiar traditional songs.
Cindy Kallet, Ellen Epstein and Michael Cicone perform both a cappella and with simple accompaniment from guitar and hammered dulcimer. The material is drawn from both contemporary and traditional works from America and the British Isles, with an occasional sea shanty thrown in. Their live performances are engaging for audiences of all ages.
The songs sung by slaves to send messages to each other will be decoded by the teaching choir led by Jim Thomas, president of the U.S. Slave Song Project, on Saturday at 7 p.m. at Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs. The concert, Songs from the Field: The Mystery of Spirituals, with guest Lavert Stuart, is family-friendly. Tickets are $15.
