A man and a woman meet and sparks fly, but not necessarily sparks beneficial to the pair’s mental health; you might almost say the incendiary materials explode in a region of dry brush during a California August. We’ve all experienced volatile relationships, or have known people who’ve weathered them. When it’s someone else, we almost need to place our hands over our eyes. When it happens to us, well, we’re like the praying mantis this reporter witnessed the other night spreading its translucent silver and chartreuse wings over a glass-covered lantern; take the beauty and try to endure the burn.

West Tisbury and Boston playwright and theatre director Jon Lipsky, a few years ago, wrote an entry for the Boston Short Play Marathon. For this annual event, all the works are submitted by Boston-based companies and regional outfits such as our own much-acclaimed Vineyard Playhouse. Mr. Lipsky says, “This first short play [he submitted] was the story of a young man and a young woman who meet because they’re drawn to a sense of danger in the process of getting together.”

The next year, Mr. Lipsky submitted another playlet with an entirely different pair of romancers, yet the dynamic was similar, essentially posing the question, “Can this much adrenaline between two people produce lasting love or long-term misery or both?”

His third offering again called forth a new duo with the same, shall we say, femme and homme fatale qualities. “I was drawn to this scenario, although the plays aren’t autobiographical,” says Mr. Lipsky. “On the other hand, I knew these characters as they emerged from my imagination. They grew up in the sixties, they were dynamic, dramatic and fiery. They were also suspicious and untrusting of one another.” But also wildly, mutually attracted.

Mr. Lipsky realized that his various couples embodied an archetypical and kaleidoscopic vision of a particular relationship moving through time. By his fourth short play fulgent with the same theme, the artist gave in to his fixation and devoted himself to going flat out with the experiment. The result is eight short plays written over eight years in what the prize-winning playwright terms a “short play progression” entitled Walking The Volcano, and set to debut here at the Vineyard Playhouse. The final preview is tonight, the opening night is tomorrow and the run continues through August 8.

The first four plays come together as a first act in which four young couples from widely divergent backgrounds meet in different, highly charged settings, fall in love, and attempt to become deeply involved. The second act of four scenarios engages another four couples, older and trajected ahead through time and entanglement. “The bond is true, but will the center hold?” sums up Mr. Lipsky.

He is a professor of acting and playwriting at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts who 14 years ago decided to base himself on the Vineyard. He is grateful for the chance to develop this work with playhouse artistic director M.J. Bruder Munafo. Mr. Lipsky, longtime artistic associate, has himself directed plays at this venue in the past, but for Walking the Volcano he’s been absorbing Ms. Munafo’s insights for tightening and clarifying the writing.

The actors, Robert Walsh, Marya Lowry, Christian Pedersen and Heather Giardi, have helped originate their roles.

“The director and actors have expressed themselves in moments that have shown me what I meant,” says the playwright with pure humility and gratification.

Mr. Lipsky, whose father, Eleazar Lipsky, was a nationally-known novelist, spent all of his childhood summers on the Island. With his wife, yoga-instructor Kanta Lipsky, and their two sons, Adam, now 22, and Jonah, now 20, Jon became a year-round Vineyard resident.

He found their move to the Island rewarding on many levels. “I have to say, my biggest reason for putting down deeper roots here was my attachment to the playhouse,” says Mr. Lipsky.

In an interview in the New York Times recently, Mr. Lipsky avowed that doing a play in one’s hometown is like no other experience in theatre. On the phone to the Gazette, he adds, “Working in your own community keeps you honest. If you move people, it’s not necessarily theatre people you’re moving. It wasn’t until I lived year-round on the Vineyard that I understood what true community was all about: people who are different from one another yet who still feel a profound bond.”

The reactions to his stage work from his hardware store retailer, his carpenter and his fishing-crazy neighbor mean more to the wordsmith than anyone else’s.

Meanwhile Jon and Kanta’s sons are showing the performance-oriented family gene: Adam, a student at Hampshire College, is a musician who also acts (he appeared in the recent playhouse workshop production of Kim and Delia). Jonah, a student at Bennington College, is drawn to acting and has a role at the Island Theatre Workshop’s upcoming musical, Summer of ’42, directed by Taffy McCarthy.

Tickets for Walking the Volcano are on sale at the Vineyard Playhouse. Call 508-696-6300. Show times are 7 p.m. on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 8 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.