One Act Play Festival

Children’s Theatre

Island Theatre Workshop’s Children’s Theatre summer program opens for the season on Monday, June 28, at the Sailing Camp Park on the Lagoon in Oak Bluffs. There will be four two-week sessions for ages 6 to 18 from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Nurturing self-expression with immersion in voice, movement and acting training in a unique and supportive environment, students rehearse and perform an original play at the end of each session, with the support and guidance of experienced staff.

Kids’ Theatre Workshop

Island theatre arts educator Phyllis Vecchia is offering a Thursday afternoon spring creative drama workshop from May 6 through June 10. Designed for children ages four-and-a-half to nine, classes will be held from 3:30 to 4:45 p.m. in the home economics room of the Oak Bluffs School. Each week, in addition to theatre exercises, costuming and character games, young thespians will reenact a new folk or fairy tale. No acting experience is necessary.

Musical to Put You Under a Spell

Spellcheck is for wussies. Plus it’s boring. A right answer every time. Where’s the drama in that? How about backing away from the keyboard and heading to where the real action is, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Starting July 22 and continuing through August 8, this Tony Award winning musical will be moving into the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven, courtesy of the Island Theatre Workshop.

IMPers Come Home

Having performed at the Chicago, Boston and Providence improv festivals, the IMPers are playing the home stage again. The Island’s teen comedy improv troupe will do a two-act show of spontaneous theater on Friday, Jan. 15 at 8 p.m. at the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven.

Just back from their performances and workshops in Chicago, the IMPers, the Island’s teen professional improv troupe, will perform their improvisation games and skits based on audience suggestions on Saturday, June 5, at 8 p.m. at Katharine Cornell Theater on Spring street in Vineyard Haven.

This troupe has been honored three times by the Chicago Improv Festival and has performed at the Boston and Providence Improv Festivals. Don’t miss this one-night-only show, fun for teens and adults alike.

Three plays in development will debut with pay-what-you-can performances this weekend at the Vineyard Arts Project in Edgartown. Each play runs Thursday, Friday and Saturday, in a rotating schedule so viewers can see three different plays in one day, or one each day, or any other combination.

In the land of Neverland, where little kids never grow up and swashbuckling pirates can never seem to defeat a team of rough-and-tumble young orphans, imagination rules. So too does it rule in the gymnasium of the Tisbury School, where on Friday night a group of some two dozen kids will channel the despised clan of Captain Hook and the always-triumphant lost boys, in the school’s second production of a musical version of the hit movie Hook.

The folks responsible for the musical Witness Uganda were seated in a circle of folding chairs in a large mirrored Vineyard Arts Project studio Tuesday afternoon, taking a needed break from their rehearsal schedule to talk about the origins of their project. Writer and director team Matt Gould and Griffin Matthews offered tales of their travels to Africa, shared stories of the Ugandan university students around whom the script is based, and introduced two of their star actors, Leslie Odom Jr. and Nicolette Robinson.

BravÉncore is hosting Seats for Scotland, a gala dinner at the Harbor View Hotel in Edgartown on Thursday, April 29, in an effort to raise money for the travel expenses of the 17 Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School students invited to represent their country in Edinburgh this August, at the 2010 Fringe Festival, the largest theatre festival in the world.