The Island’s annual Bloomsday Festival, celebrating the writings of James Joyce, returns this Saturday to a new location: the First Congregational Church of West Tisbury. The event is is traveling up-Island this year while the Katharine Cornell Theatre is being used by the Tisbury town hall.

This year marks the 42nd annual Bloomsday Festival, held as close as possible to the 24-hour window in which the protagonist of Ulysses, Leopold Bloom, wanders the streets of Dublin. In the novel, that day is June 16, however this year Bloomsday will be held on June 18.

The event features a cast of actors, musicians and other performers who will bring Joyce’s poems, songs and short stories to life.

“There’re no readings, there’s no lecture—people perform,” said John Crelan, who has organized the Bloomsday Festival since 1979, when it was put together to raise money for the struggling epicenter of Boston’s beat movement, Stone Soup Poetry. When Mr. Crelan moved the Island, he brought the festivities with him.

“Music, drama, music and humor,” Mr. Crelan said, are at the heart of the Bloomsday celebration, which has a history of embracing all kinds of performance media—from avant-garde music to hip-hop dance.

This year, a mix of new and returning cast members will act out short stories, perform songs from Joyce’s Ulysses set to their own scores, and even debut an original chamber music composition.

Bloomsday is open to all—fans of Joyce or newcomers. Admission is $25. Show begins at 8 p.m., Saturday, June 18, at the First Congregational Church of West Tisbury.

— Noah Glasgow