Spring must be on its way; the Island Theatre Workshop’s spring play festival, now in its fifth year, is about to begin.
This year’s festival runs Thursday, March 10 through Sunday, March 13 and then again from Thursday, March 17 through Sunday, March 20. Evening shows begin at 7:30 p.m. with additional Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. All shows are to be performed at the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven.
IMP presents theatre by kids, for kids at the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven Jan. 21 through 23.
The performances will include 40 young actors ages 8 to 13 creating spontaneous theatre based on audience suggestions.
The actors will also present Sugar Rush, about the short but sweet life of a gingerbread boy. This musical play was written by Ross Mihalko, Donna Swift and Brian Weiland.
Everyday life can easily turn into theatre. Political theatre, familial theatre, personal theatre: We encounter it all the time. But good writers and directors can translate that onstage and make the audience connect with a scene they may have never encountered before.
Even better, playwrights, directors and actors can translate it into one-act plays.
Shakespeare for the Masses is free. It’s also the quickest way to get your Billy the Bard on. Shows clock in at under an hour. Some thee’s and thou’s, here a sonnet, there a sonnet, hopefully a beheading or two and, of course, love olde English style and then you’re back out on the streets of Tisbury pleasantly buzzed if not a bit bewildered by a sudden thirst for vengeance at the injustice some rival king has played upon you.
Mrs. Baker, played by the irrepressible 10-year-old local pop diva Samantha Cassidy, wants a baby and Mr. Baker, the similarly pre-teened Oliver Carson, does not. (On alternate days last weekend these characters were performed by Danielle Hopkins and Jesse Dawson.) Mr. Baker wants a big fat, gingerbread cookie to eat. They fight/sing about it: “Food feeds all your problems unless your problems are food.”
Although most of the Island is concerned with saying hello to the birdies as spring begins to unfold, the Tisbury School seventh and eighth graders are riding against the grain by saying goodbye to the birdies.
Well, actually no real birds are involved at all. Nor pinkletinks, crocuses or snowdrops.
The art of improv is the art of saying yes. In other words, whatever is offered up during the performance by the audience or fellow actors, the main ingredient to success is to go with it.
Sounds like a sound philosophy for life or at least for getting through the tough, or merely odd moments, that pop up each day. And what better time in one’s life to embrace this message than when we are young.
The scent of mothballs had no chance to cling to Chris Abbot. Last year he retired from his teaching job, which included directing the annual school play at the Tisbury School. But only a few weeks ago, school principal Richie Smith inveigled him to return to the boards for Mr. Abbot’s third pass, rolled out this past weekend, of the musical Bye Bye Birdie.
