From the streetfront, the Vineyard Arts Project appears to be another large house on Main street. There is no hint that past its picket fence is unfolding, in turn: life on the Texas-Mexico border; family drama at a racially-charged estate; and people singing and dancing about the financial crisis.

Come Thursday (and Friday and Saturday) it all will become clear when three brand new works for the stage — two plays and one musical — debut as works-in-progress on Martha’s Vineyard. Playwright Tanya Saracho (referred to as “the Chicana Chekov”) is workshopping the second play in her border trilogy; Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s play, Appropriate, brings together an estranged family who make a gruesome discovery when they come home to settle a financially-fraught estate; and then there are Deborah Smith and LPfunK (Lucas Papaelias), hanging out in Edgartown, writing a rock musical about pyramid schemes.

What’s happening at this large house is New Writers, New Plays, a theatre festival produced by Vineyard Arts Project and ArtFarm Enterprises, back for its second year.

More than 30 people have been living there for the past few weeks, doing a bit of the expected: Yesterday there was a barbecue going, laughter in the kitchen, swimsuits drying over the deck.

But they are not vacationers. They are auditioned Broadway actors, professional directors and young playwrights working in residence, so there were also live music sessions on the porch, frantic typing in the office, and nearly nonstop rehearsals in the huge studio designed for the performing arts, disguised as the back of the house.

The New Writers, New Plays residency gives three up-and-coming playwrights four solid weeks to incubate their scripts, including two weeks with directors and actors there to workshop the drafts and early staging.

The setting for the festival is a deceptive complex of buildings in Edgartown purpose-built for a troupe of performers to do creative work while living in the same location.

“I’m going back tomorrow, bro, I’m sick and tired of this place,” said Flaco Navaja, actor and rapper, laughing.

“Nah, I woke up this morning thinking, ‘Where am I again?’ So it’s pretty amazing. It’s just rare that you get the opportunity to create in such an inviting and serene place.”

After its first year, the New Writers, New Plays festival has caught the attention of the theatre community at large.

“The plays [produced in last summer’s festival] have now gone on to have another life,” said Ashley Melone, director of Vineyard Arts Project and owner of the building wherein all the magic is happening.

“One play we did last year, Disgraced, is optioned by the Araca Group which are major producers in New York. They produced Wicked on Broadway.

“And Witness Uganda, the other musical we were doing, is in contracts with producers right now.”

Having had such a successful first year, Ms. Melone and Brooke Hardman, the artistic director of ArtFarm Enterprises and the coproducer of New Writers, New Plays, decided to expand the rehearsal time with actors and directors from one week to two weeks.

All the actors, directors and writers are being paid, and most of the actors are part of the union, Actors Equity Association. They all are working professionals who have been selected for this project by Ms. Melone and Ms. Hardman in collaboration with the writers.

“One of the big changes from last year to this year is that the theatre community at large in the U.S. — mostly in New York and in Chicago and even in L.A. — are starting to really know about New Writers, New Plays as a really safe environment to develop new work in a beautiful place,” Ms. Melone said.

“We have literary managers making the trip up from New York or out from Boston to come and see these readings, because they know that these are plays that they are going to want to produce on their stages, so that’s a really big honor for Brooke and me as producers to get this kind of respect from major theatres like the Public in New York to want to be here,” said Ms. Melone.

Tonight special guests James Lapine, a Tony Award-winning Broadway director and writer, and Mandy Hackett, the associate artistic director of the Public Theatre in New York, will moderate a panel discussion about the script development process with the writers and directors at Vineyard Arts Project. In line with ArtFarm’s ethos of making art open and accessible, this talk is free and open to the public, beginning at 7 p.m. at Vineyard Arts Project.

Come Thursday, Islanders can be the first to see all three works in New Writers, New Plays, too, in pay-what-you-can performances at 1, 4 and 7 p.m. The schedule of plays rotates each day, so you can see all three in one marathon day of theatre, or come at the same time every day and see three plays over three days.

Ms. Hardman is excited about the plays this year. “I love the combination of Tanya and Branden together because they are both writing about race in America,” she said. “And so to have that coupled with a musical about the financial crisis, it feels like we’re covering a lot of ground. You know, artists speaking about where our country is at right now.”

Eric Ting, who is directing Appropriate, and also is the associate artistic director at Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Conn., said the Vineyard Arts Project was invaluable.

“We always talk about the value of developmental workshops that take place in a cocoon environment—a place where all the artists feel taken care of and all the artists feel safe and there’s not a lot of distraction,” said Mr. Ting said.

It’s very conducive to creative work, he said, because everyone is together all the time. As he talked, standing in the complex’s main kitchen, artists drifted through as if to prove his point.

Ms. Saracho said the festival is the perfect setup for her because she is used to devising plays alongside a cast of actors who are exploring the play as she generates it. In Edgartown, Ms. Saracho is developing a play that is the second in a three-part series dealing with border issues between Mexico and the United States. The play is untitled because she began writing it three weeks ago. The first in the series, El Nogalar, was her adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard.

Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins recently won the Paula Vogel award for his play Neighbors, a racially charged piece that explores the perception of black identity. The current play that he is writing, called Appropriate, was started two years ago, and then shelved, but is now coming back into life with the help of the festival.

The musical Pyramidica is the first attempt at a musical play by longtime collaborators Deborah C. Smith and LPfunK. They have written music and played in bands together for years and are now trying musical theatre writing. LPfunK was one of the actors in last year’s New Writers, New Plays.

Ms. Hardman is excited that Islanders get to see this work before anyone else does. “It’s just such a thrill to bring it to this community that gives us so much,” she said.