The Yard hosts a free, open performance from its choreographer in residence, Ana Isabel Keilson, on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. at the barn theatre on Middle Road near Beetlebung Corner in Chilmark.
It’s a Wonderful Life, the radio play written by Philip Grecian based on the film by Frank Capra, is being performed on Dec. 17 at 8 p.m. and Dec. 18 at 1 p.m. by the Vineyard Playhouse at the regional high school’s performing arts center.
This live stage “radio show” is recommended for ages eight and older.
The IMPers holiday show is this Saturday, Dec. 17, beginning at 8 p.m. at the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven.
For those out of the know, IMP is the Island’s teen professional improv troupe. The show is a chance to help them out as they preview material slated for submission to the 2012 Chicago Improv Festival. But, of course, not everything will be scripted. Audience members will be asked to arrive loaded with holiday suggestion from which the improv group will weave their hilarious magic.
For those on the Vineyard who have witnessed the past two summer productions from the PigPen Theatre Company you know what it means to be completely transported, body and soul, to, without gilding the lily one bit, a place of imagination so powerful adults have been known to become toddlers on the spot: mute, with finger outstretched and prone to falling down in fits of giggles and wonderment. Kids, well, they simply become transfixed, the feeling so strong they refuse to watch television for weeks afterwards. It just doesn’t compare.
It’s A Wonderful Life, for anyone who has accidentally missed the 20th century, was originally a 1946 movie directed by Frank Capra starring Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, and Lionel Barrymore. This weekend, the Vineyard Playhouse is rebooting the story as a radio drama written by Phillip Grecian, the kind where the audience is stationed in front of a clutter of equipment and watches while a character actor takes out a stick of gum and chomps on it, and the sound guy hits the glockenspiel.
The Amish Project is a play that faces big questions head on, including how do you forgive the murder of five innocent little girls?
The play is based on the tragic events of Oct. 2, 2006 when a gunman entered a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and shot 10 young girls, killing five of them.
Later the Amish people of that community publicly forgave the gunman in a service of reconciliation. Eventually, the West Nickel Mines schoolhouse was torn down and the New Hope School was built at another location.
The late great star of the stage, Katharine Cornell, who lies buried behind the theatre she bequeathed to the town of Tisbury, would approve of the choice of The Turn of the Screw for the Island Theatre Workshop’s Halloween presentation.
Nightmares were never so much fun. During the past two weeks the campers at Imp have been learning the ways of improv — the fast action, quick reflexes of theatrical art Yoda would be proud of. But who’s to say, once the mind is unleashed to improvise at will, how the subconscious will be affected.
On Friday, July 29, you are about to find out as the campers present The Dreams and Nightmares Show at the Edgartown School.
This weekend the Vineyard Arts Project is presenting a performance by Morphoses, a dance company that has been in residence at VAP since Sept. 11. During this time the troupe has been working on a show entitled Bacchae by resident artistic director Lucca Vegetti.
Comedian Scott Blakeman is back on the Island (he always seems to arrive with a hurricane) to treat Island audiences to a large dose of political humor.
Mr. Blakeman’s show is entitled Liberal Jew: The Comedy of Scott Blakeman. This, of course, is an indication of the show’s leanings, but no worries, in the world of politics and humor, all sides are fair game.
