As he sits for an interview in the kitchen of his mother’s Oak Bluffs cottage, Paul Padua seamlessly breaks into and out of character — not just one, but many of the roles he’s played over the years as a member of the Vineyard Playhouse performance group the Fabulists.

First there is the Hairy Man, a character with a low, gravelly voice sure to stir up some alarm in the young audience for whom the Fabulists primarily perform at the Tisbury amphitheatre. “The only time I’ve ever been recognized on the streets in New York was by someone who had been to the Vineyard and said ‘Hey! You’re the Hairy Man!’ That was my big moment,” joked Mr. Padua.

Another memorable character is Flossie, the flamboyant and temperamental dance choreographer with a bitingly shrill voice and bossy demeanor. Eventually, Mr. Padua breaks into a feminine Irish brogue, as a character he played costumed in his aunt’s oversized dress.

Mr. Padua is no stranger to performance. But his involvement with entertainment and the arts has been interspersed with periods of mathematic and scientific exploration as well.

“My whole life has been kind of a cycle of arts and sciences,” he explained.

He studied engineering his first semester in college but ended up graduating from Tulane with a bachelor of fine arts degree in acting, and followed up his study of performing arts with a career teaching computer programming. A layoff from that teaching job, and an early spring visit to the Vineyard, ended up propelling Mr. Padua back into the field of acting.

“There was a sign for auditions for Shakespeare in the amphitheatre,” remembered Mr. Padua. Despite his initial hesitation, his sister convinced him to give it a shot. “My sister said, ‘Do you have somewhere else to go?’ I ended up getting a part in Much Ado About Nothing, and later another small part in A Comedy of Errors. It was a rebirth for me, the Island. At 22 I was ready to spring into the theatre world but then I had this whole other life that happened. And then when it kind of unraveled, this was a rebirth.”

His involvement in community theatre led him to a small group of stand-up and sketch-comedy actors. He ended up spending the entire summer on the Vineyard, writing, acting and biking to rehearsals. “It was fantastic. This whole thing opened up,” he said.

When the summer concluded and his unemployment checks stopped coming, Mr. Padua returned to his home in Boston to try his hand at stand-up comedy. The gig paid off for a while, but his interests in acting focused more on working with people than performing alone on stage. He decided to join his summer friends in Manhattan to work on sketch comedy, which he supplemented by becoming a teacher.

“We were doing the clubs down there, and so the nineties for me were just really fun. But I had a son, so I had to be making some money. I had to be sending some money home . . . and I started teaching. And I really liked teaching.”

He now lives in Manhattan with his wife and two youngest children, teaching high school level math at Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day High School — a return to the other more technical aspect of his personality. He spends summers on the Island, acting with the Fabulists to satisfy his passion for performing arts.

The children’s theatre group, assembled in the late 1980s, performs on Saturday mornings throughout July and August at the Tisbury amphitheatre, with Mr. Padua often out front to lead the show. He writes many of the outlines for the shows that the Fabulists perform, and he often acts as narrator, slipping into character roles when necessary. The shows are loosely structured, incorporating elements of sketch comedy, stand-up and improvisation to delight young children and parents alike.

“They are ultimately to create entertainment for children, but they appeal to a very broad range. And it’s kind of an easy target with the adults on Saturday morning, because when you bring your kid to something, you’re just happy when they are happy . . . along the way, everyone is going to have a good time,” he said.

He remembers a time when a crowd of 50 would have been considered a huge success. Now Saturday morning performances draw audiences of several hundred. The Fabulists perform four different plays in the summer, with two performances of each show. According to Mr. Padua, many people come to performances two weeks in a row to enjoy the same show, always varied slightly depending on the direction the players choose to take with the material.

“To be able to interact, and draw in a whole family at 10 o’clock on a Saturday morning . . . it’s really storytelling. We’re the Fabulists, we’re storytellers of fables,” he said.

The Fabulists perform children’s theatre Saturdays in July and August at 10 a.m. at the Tisbury ampitheatre. Tickets are $7, at the door only, children under two are free. Performances are cancelled if raining.