They say the Island is a breeding ground for ticks and some other creepy insects bearing bad news. So while I was looking this way and that, I didn’t see it coming and got bitten by the theatre bug. The next thing I knew I was joining the play readers group and the board of the Vineyard Playhouse. I have to say the attack has been most rewarding.

Hundreds of people raised their glasses and funds for the Vineyard Playhouse at a gala at Blue Heron Farm, President Obama’s former Chilmark vacation home, on Saturday.

The fundraiser was hosted by new Blue Heron Farm property owners Lord Norman and Lady Elena Foster, as well as Playhouse patrons Friederike and Jeremy Biggs.

Artistic director MJ Bruder Munafo said the event raised more than $125,000 for the ongoing capital campaign to restore and renovate the historic Vineyard Playhouse building in Vineyard Haven.

Artist Tom Smith is almost breathless when he talks about his work.

“I love the line between what is formal, designed, almost constricted — and what is natural and rank,” he said. “I love the border between the cultivated and the wild.”

“I literally could not breathe,” she said in an interview with the Gazette at her home in Chilmark. “I was so transported by it, and it meant so much to me.”

Ms. Steenburgen grew up in a home with “fairly modest means,” and found refuge from family and life challenges in the audience, on the stage and in the wings of the community theatre.

It’s been 180 years since the Vineyard Playhouse building was first built on Church street in Tisbury. For the past three years, the playhouse staff and board of directors have been hard at work ensuring that it stands another two centuries. Construction is scheduled to wrap this week on the downstairs portion of the two-story building, allowing the playhouse to invite people in for the first time since 2011.

On Monday, the Vineyard Playhouse, the Martha’s Vineyard Museum and the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center were awarded capital grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Facilities Fund. Of the 10 projects funded in the southeast region, three are in Vineyard Haven.

Calling all Island thespians: it’s audition weekend and time to strut your inner scarecrow, mad monkey or one of Shakespeare’s finest.

The Island Theatre Workshop will be putting on a late summer production of The Wizard of Oz and they are currently on the prowl for principal actors. Auditions began on Thursday and continue on Saturday, May 18, from 4 to 7 p.m. and Sunday, May 19, from 4 to 7 p.m. at 12 Music street in West Tisbury. For more information, call 508-627-2456 or 508-737-8550.