The Island theatre group ArtFarm is gearing up for a groundbreaking third season, with a summer lineup true to its mission to collaborate, educate and innovate.

First up is the second annual New Writers, New Plays festival of readings by emerging playwrights, which is a coproduction between ArtFarm and Vineyard Arts Project. Playwrights, directors and cast will be in residence for four weeks developing scripts, and will present readings of the plays on July 7, 8 and 9 at the Vineyard Arts Project at 215 Upper Main street in Edgartown.

Few in the audience were unmoved at the end of Assertions, a song, dance and theatre performance about bullying.

The Thursday night performance took place at the Performing Arts Center at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, and was a collaborative effort among Island schools — both the regional high school and the charter school — IMP Improv for kids, YMCA dancers, Joanne Cassidy and other musical guests.

The Vineyard Playhouse will hold open auditions for its summer main stage season on Saturday, April 30, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the playhouse on Church street in downtown Vineyard Haven.

Creative drama teacher Phyllis Vecchia has an innovative way to get history across to sixth graders: Rather than talking about suffragettes Amelia Bloomer and Susan B. Anthony, and the abolitionist Henry Stanton, she has them BE Amelia Bloomer and Susan B. Anthony and Henry Stanton. In a rousing half-hour in Amy Reece’s sixth grade class at the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School on Thursday of last week, Ms. Vecchia guided the entire class through improvised paces of the women’s rights movement from 1840 to 1860.

Compassion is not a quick fix to social injustice and prejudice in the world. It grows too slowly within people. But without compassion there is no hope of real change. And building lasting change is the true base line of Untouchable Voices, a play written by musician Tabea Mangelsdorf and actress Anna Procter.

The Vineyard Playhouse is getting set for their summer season. And as a spring teaser they are presenting a staged reading of Dick and Lola, a new comedy by Debra Monk at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, May 20 and Saturday, May 21.

What happened at the end of high school that you would rather forget? And what would it be like if your dark past was suddenly shoved in your face ten years later? By someone you trusted?

This is the premise of the play Tape by Stephen Bender beginning its run next Thursday, June 2 at the Vineyard Playhouse and continuing for two weeks. Tape first appeared at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in 2000 and was later adapted into a film starring Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman.

Marvelous miniature mermaids merge in movement on Martha’s Vineyard making music and merriment and maybe mayhem.

The Vineyard Playhouse’s current production of Tape, opens on a set that itself poses a plot twist and a conundrum at the same time: Lights bear down on a typical off-highway motel room with twin beds, a banal color scheme of beige, gold and brown, a sink on one side rimmed by overhead white globes. Over in the right-hand corner, a vague charcoal-hued stain hints that a repaint of the unadorned walls is long overdue.

It’s a three-person play and a two-bed motel room. Something’s already intriguingly off-kilter.

James Joyce Returns to the Stage

“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.”