Creative Cousins Keep the Arts Flowing

Abby Bender and Molly Coogan are well-known, each in their own right, as fixtures of the Vineyard’s vibrant community of creatives.

Ms. Bender, 52, is perhaps best recognized for founding the Island’s annual Built on Stilts dance and performance festival. Ms. Coogan, 50, owns Bunch of Grapes Bookstore in Vineyard Haven.

Together, they are also the architects of Membership Down!, a long-running comedic variety game show where “Island all-stars” compete to win money for an Island nonprofit of their choice. Since 2018, they’ve put on 16 versions of the show, and its newest iteration takes place on Feb. 10 at the Portuguese-American Club.

What not everyone knows is that their shared antics long precede the elaborate bits seen on-stage at the PA Club. This is because they are cousins — or if you ask Ms. Bender, “cousin-friends.”

“We’ve always played these dumb improvisational games around the kitchen table and stuff,” Ms. Bender said of growing up with Ms. Coogan. “Like, we just have fun making sh*t.”

Long before they were regulars in the year-round Vineyard arts scene, Ms. Bender and Ms. Coogan were summer kids, but on different shores. Ms. Coogan’s family summered on the Vineyard, and Ms. Bender’s family headed to Cape Cod. At the time, the two women were already step-cousins, but their families blended even more when Ms. Coogan’s grandfather began dating Ms. Bender’s grandmother. Suddenly, Island summers were the center of the family’s universe.

As children, Ms. Bender and Ms. Coogan gravitated toward each other instantly.

“I used to lock Molly and her brother, Andrew, in the closet to play with me,” Ms. Bender said.

Their friendship continued as they grew older, with a high-school-aged Ms. Coogan always eager to visit her older cousin at college. When Ms. Coogan decided she wanted to spend the summer after high school graduation living and working on the Vineyard without her parents, her family insisted she bring Ms. Bender, a fresh college postgraduate, as her chaperone. They took up residence together at their family home across from Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs, in the unit of the house fittingly dubbed the “family apartment.”

That summer, they realized their bond was more than just familial.

“Once we became young adults, we became true cousin-friends,” Ms. Bender said.

“We could share lots of things, like cigarettes,” Ms. Coogan added. “We had some of the same tastes in stuff.”

It would be many years before the pair found themselves living on the Island full-time.

After college, Ms. Coogan settled in Boston to pursue a publishing job, then relocated to upstate New York. But the Vineyard’s pull was strong enough to bring her back permanently, this time with her husband and children.

“I had wanted to move here since I was a kid,” she said. “If you look at all of my writing from when I was a kid in school, it was always about the Vineyard, whether it was an essay or a short story. It was only a matter of time.”

Meanwhile, Ms. Bender was enmeshed in the Brooklyn performing arts scene, where she was artistic director of the dance and performance company she founded, Triskelion Arts. But after hitting her “New York City wall,” she felt called to the Vineyard and to Ms. Coogan.

“It’s kind of weird how it happened, because our lives have ebbed and flowed,” Ms. Bender said. “We always were close, but there were a lot of years that we weren’t seeing each other all the time.”

Now that the two own homes in Oak Bluffs within walking distance of each other, they are able to collaborate on projects like Membership Down!, the much-cherished fruit of their shared labor.

Ms. Bender originally conceived of the show with Nate Luce, then the program director of the Oak Bluffs library. Immediately, she knew Ms. Coogan needed to be involved.

“​​He said, what do you think about doing a game show here? And I immediately said, ‘I’m calling my cousin Molly,’” Ms. Bender recalled.

The show’s name pays homage to Watership Down, the 1972 adventure-fantasy novel by Richard Adams that follows a group of intrepid anthropomorphized rabbits.

Membership Down! contestants battle it out in tests of trivia, poetry, art, dance and even agility. There are no ticket sales — only suggested donations — but all proceeds go to supporting essential Island organizations such as Martha’s Vineyard Community Services and Island Grown Initiative.

Since 2018, the show has raised over $10,000 for local nonprofits.

“Something that I love about making art, and especially making art here on this Island, is that I feel like everything I do is for the greater good of the community,” Ms. Coogan said.

But shepherding a Membership Down! show from start to finish is never a small task.

Together, Ms. Bender and Ms. Coogan script each show in its entirety — except, of course, for the contestants’ performance in challenges — and rehearse with stand-in contestants to not spoil any surprises.

Even the silliest of props require serious and discerning consideration.

“We have these fake butts that will be appearing in some small way in the next show,” Ms. Bender said.

The give-and-take of artistic collaboration comes easily to Ms. Bender and Ms. Coogan, who have making each other laugh since they were kids.

“We’re both gorgeous and hilarious,” Ms. Bender said.

They have plenty of differences, too. Ms. Coogan’s affinity for black coffee draws the envy of Ms. Bender, who can’t get it down without milk and sugar. And while Ms. Bender is the more extroverted of the two, she said it’s usually Ms. Coogan whose ideas, equal parts heady and wacky, need to be reined in. But only sometimes.

“Her jokes are a little wordy, they’re a little bookish or a little esoteric,” Ms. Bender said. “Oftentimes, it’s worth keeping them in.”

Ms. Bender wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Molly’s one of the most hilarious people I’ve ever met in my life,” she said. “I feel like we really know each other.”

For Ms. Coogan, the reverence is mutual.

“I’d do anything for Abby,” Ms. Coogan said. “I even wore a garbage bag once.”

Membership Down! is far from their only artistic pursuit. Ms. Bender continues to perform with the Island’s improvisational comedy troupe, TBD Improv, and is working with Circuit Arts to launch the first-ever “No Bones” comedy and performance festival in May. Ms. Coogan, alongside Ms. Bender, dipped her toe into sketch comedy last year.

Do the cousin-friends consider themselves pillars of the Vineyard’s artistic community? Not exactly.

If anything, the pair said, they’re more like mushrooms: embedded in the Vineyard’s artistic mycelium, engaged in its symbiosis and capable of growing even in darkness.

“We create great things,” Ms. Coogan said. “We’re both fun guys.”

Membership Down! takes place on Tuesday, Feb. 10 from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at the Portuguese-American Club in Oak Bluffs.

This article appears in February 6, 2026.