For people who are scared (or uninterested) in the work of William Shakespeare, the Vineyard is a good place to get over it. The Vineyard Playhouse’s summer Shakespeare in the Amphitheatre is as playful and robust as anything on Nickelodeon, and in the off-season, Shakespeare for the Masses makes the Bard seem as accessible as an HBO series.
The Vineyard Playhouse is starting up its fall season this weekend with a series of short plays entitled Hot Tickets.
On Saturday and Sunday, both nights at 7:30 p.m., the evening will feature The Graduation of Grace by Wendy Kesselman, The Last Appointment by Madge Kaplan, and Slow Train Coming by Maureen Hourihan. The following weekend the plays will be Maker’s Mark by Alexandra Bullen The Lovers by Marisa Michelson and Joshua H. Cohen.
The Vineyard Playhouse has been awarded a prestigious $10,000 grant from the Shubert Foundation Inc., according to an announcement by the playhouse artistic director MJ Bruder Munafo and board president Gerry Yukevich.
Not to start on too bossy a note, but do go out and catch all five plays and musical productions of the African American Theatre Festival being performed, mostly, at the Vineyard Playhouse and running this week through early September.
The festival began this past Wednesday with Root, a one-woman play written and performed by Vanessa German and directed by Heather Arnet. The play travels from 1980s Los Angeles to the Civil Rights marches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to drug-saturated Juarez, Mexico to a battered and drenched New Orleans.
On Oct. 23 the Beatles are coming to the Vineyard. And you thought their debut at Shea Stadium was monumental.
For those worried, or excited, about ghostly visages, the folks playing the music will not be the Fab Four but rather local Island musicians who call themselves the Daytrippers. But close your eyes and it may truly be John, George, Paul and Ringo you hear.
Some call her Big Roz. Others call her Lady Roz G. Most just call her drop-dead funny.
Roz G. is on the Vineyard July 7 through 9, as the opening performer of a summer of comedy thanks to the folks at Knock-Knock productions. All performances take place at the Katharine Cornell Theatre located at 54 Spring street in Vineyard Haven.
Leslie Stark is a busy man this weekend. At the helm directing a group of short plays by David Ives on Sunday, he is also the man at the wheel on Saturday, Nov. 12, for reading Arnold Rabin’s new play, Quartet for a Queen. The reading takes place at 6:30 p.m. at Howes House in West Tisbury.
Built on Stilts, the annual dance festival held at the Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs, opened last night to begin its eight day run with a bit of drumming, belly dancing and a group of five-year-olds taking the stage fresh from their yearlong “Stiltshop” choreography class. What’s on the schedule for tonight is anyone’s guess, though, as the show never repeats itself.
“One by one we’re all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.”