The man in black, from his boots to bejewelled beret, was impeccably groomed on Tuesday as he stroked he neatly trimmed white beard and lamented how he’d been type-cast. He is usually the guy who gets beaten up — “the biker, the trucker, the redneck,” in his words. This experience in taking fake fisticuffs was what Broadway combat choreographer David Brimmer was passing on to an enthusiastic group of Vineyard students.
The New England Choreographers Project brings together two artists for one show on Sunday at 7 p.m. at the Yard in Chilmark: the theatrical, idiosyncratic and profoundly musical Lise Brody and Nicole Pierce.
Ms. Pierce brings her multi-media dance/theatre company EgoArt to share her ongoing exploration of Mozart’s Requiem, and performs her solo, Bunny, to electronic music. Lise Brody frolics through the Inquisition in Dances About Witches and mines the intricate music of Peter Schickele with her intergenerational dance company, Screech to a Stop.
The Vineyard Playhouse will audition for its summer Shakespeare performance — this year it will be The Taming of the Shrew — on Saturday, May 16, from noon to 4 p.m. at the playhouse on Church street in Vineyard Haven. It will be directed by Johanna McKeon.
Actors may arrive at the audition any time during the scheduled hours and sign up for an appointment that day. Everyone who comes to the audition will be seen. Actors should come prepared to perform a short (under two minutes) Shakespearean monologue from any play.
A love story with mythological heroes, shipwrecked kings, queens, witches, a drunken sailor and a famous death scene plays this weekend at the Yard in the form of Dido and Aeneas, a 50-minute opera sung in English. There will be dancing, action sequences and a string quintet.
And of course there will be its famous aria, Dido’s lament, When I Am Laid in Earth, which has been performed by artists as far from opera as Klaus Nomi, Jeff Buckley and even (as a Trance mix) Armin van Buuren.
The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School theatre arts students will perform the fabulously funny You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown in their winter musical which opens next week at the Performing Arts Center. The show opens Thursday, Feb. 12 and runs through Saturday, Feb. 14. Curtain times are 7 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, and 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Saturday. The show is double cast, so come twice. Tickets are $7 for students and seniors and $10 for adults.
Emergency Film Group of Edgartown announces an open casting call on Wednesday, June 17, for extras needed for an upcoming film to be shot in Oak Bluffs. Actors are being sought to play the roles of teenagers, teachers, and criminals. No experience necessary. The film shoot will take place in late June.
For an appointment, call Joyce Lee at 508-627-8844. Appointments will be scheduled between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m.
The 31st annual Arts and Society Bloomsday Celebration — of music and drama based on the text of James Joyce — will be performed Tuesday, June 16, at the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven. Curtain time is 8 p.m.
It’s the season of The School Play, the least cynical theatrical event in the business. Behind the curtains — that is, where there are stage curtains — schoolkids across the Island have been cooing over each other’s costumes, sketching each other’s faces with greasepaint, and studying lines and stage directions as well as for their math and science tests. Cue the butterflies, the beaming parents, the misty eyes and the magic that can’t be captured anywhere but on those boards.
Tony award-winning Def Jam poet Lemon Andersen brings his one-man spoken-word show, Excerpts from County of Kings: The Beautiful Struggle, to the intimate barn theatre at the Yard, July 10 and 11. It’s a jarring and poignant coming-of-age stage memoir that flows from hard-edged drama to urban poetry, creating a vivid portrait of growing up in New York city during the birth of hip-hop.
On Wednesday, May 20, the performing and visual arts students at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School will present Evening of the Arts, an evening of art, music and drama. Doors open at 6 p.m. Admission is free.
The halls will be filled with student art work ranging from sculpture to photography to painting to architecture and more; meanwhile, the Performing Arts Center will be filled with song, dance and drama.
