For the second time the Impers, the Island’s teen professional improvisational troupe, has been selected as an apprentice team for the Chicago Improv Festival. In April the troupe will travel to Chicago to receive hours of professional coaching, see the best improv in the world and perform their own show. Next week the troupe will launch a six-week fund-raising campaign. For more information go to the Web site troubledshores.com or e-mail info@troubledshores.com.
“Gentlemen, I am tickled pink to be instructing you colored fliers,” announces white Captain O’Hurley (Joe Forbrich) to his black World War II aviation cadets, in a voice dripping more sarcasm than the crankcase of a P-40 Warhawk extrudes oil. In truth, at the time that the first black airmen were trained at Tuskegee Army Airfield in 1941, many believed the cadets lacked the intelligence and skill to fly a single-engine or multi-engine plane.
ArtFarm Enterprises will be holding auditions for their inaugural production of Kim & Delia, an original full length play by Islander and ArtFarm co-founder Brian Ditchfield, on Sunday, April 26, from noon to 4 p.m. at the Farm Institute. Most of the roles have already been cast, but producers are still looking for an actress between the ages of 10 and 12 to play the lead role of Kim, and a non-Equity actress to play several ensemble roles.
Audition sides are available online at artfarmenterprises.com.
On Sunday, July 19, a giant Mother Earth puppet together with accompany the Green Man — a 12-foot-tall spirit of vegetation — lead a wild menagerie of puppets down Main street in Vineyard Haven.
The parade marks the middle of the third annual Martha’s Vineyard Puppet Festival. Troupes from Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Maine join forces with four groups from the Vineyard to offer shows and tell stories from Africa, Asia, the forest and the sea.
Built on Stilts, the Island’s community dance and performance festival, is accepting registrations for participating artists now through July 1. The festival will run from August 12 to 17. The Built on Stilts children’s programs, Stiltshop and Advancedshop, are also now enrolling on a first-come, first-served basis. Visit builtonstilts.org for details and application forms.
The Vineyard Playhouse continues its popular summer series of new work, the Monday Night Special, with a reading and singing of a new play by Frank Higgins entitled Black Pearl Sings onMonday, August 24at 7 p.m. at the Vineyard Playhouse.
The Lonesome West, a play by award-winning playwright Martin McDonagh, is being performed at the Katharine Cornell Theatre this Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. Kristian Seney is directing, and the cast includes Chris Brophy, Rob Myers, Katharine Pilcher and Xavier Powers.
Island Theatre Workshop’s long-running summer program, Children’s Theatre, begins on Monday, June 29 and runs through Friday, August 21 at the Sailing Camp park on Barnes Road in Oak Bluffs,
Poetry is coming back to Che’s Lounge in Vineyard Haven. The popular music venue has hosted several poetry events including Vineyard Slam, Hot Words, and the Warrior Writers (Iraq Veterans against the War). Linda Black and Michael West, organizers of the new Island Voices series, invite Island poets of all ages, styles, and levels of accomplishment to come and share their work in celebration of National Poetry Month.
The island could be any island. Anyone with connections to an island — such as those of us who live on or visit Martha’s Vineyard — will think it’s their island. The year is 1942, and although there’s a major war going on and hairstyles and clothes are vintage to our modern sensibilities, the scene of three teen males (provenance Brooklyn, Yonkers and New Jersey) slapping hands at the pier for the start of another season is interchangeable from the scene of all teen males regrouping at the start of all the summers in time.
