What would happen if we actually were able to live with the celebrities we fawn over? You’d need to fully restock your kitchen three times a day to support Michael Phelps. Annie Oakley would surely stir up trouble with the neighbors. Whoever it is, normal life would simply go awry.
In her work-in-progress play, Wild Nights, award-winning author Joyce Carol Oates portrays the attempted assimilation of not only a celebrity, but one of the greatest literary names of all time — Emily Dickinson.
On an island off the coast of Georgia, moths beat against the screen as George Dawes Green and his childhood friends stay up late telling stories on a cozy summer porch.
Years later, Mr. Green sits in New York city growing tired of the loud, crowded and fast-paced parties of his adopted home.
“They were just so rapid-fire — no one could possibly squeeze in a word,” he remembered. “I just got tired of cocktail parties because I had been nurtured on stories and people telling them.”
Storyteller par excellence Susan Klein captured the imagination of more than 40 people Saturday night at the Unitarian-Universalist Society of Martha’s Vineyard on Main street in Vineyard Haven, with her program entitled Silent Night, An Evening of Christmas Stories.
The raconteuse from Oak Bluffs opened with a sound check: “We’re recording all live performances from here on — just because.” Because, Ms. Klein explained, when she was old and gray she wanted to sit back and listen to us laugh again.
Again and again, it seems, Christmas brings us face to face with the same old question. Where does a rabidly materialistic society like our own get off celebrating the man who taught poverty by reveling in a superfluity of consumer goods? Perhaps they didn’t juggle exactly the same paradox, but the monks of 12th century England labored over the same vexing question of how best to reconcile Christian piety with the pull of earthly delights.
The Vineyard Playhouse is holding open auditions for Earl Hamner Jr.’s The Homecoming, adapted by Christopher Sergel and directed by M.J. Bruder Munafo. Auditions will be held on Thursday, Oct. 25 and Friday, Oct. 26 from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Vineyard Playhouse, 24 Church street in Vineyard Haven.
Actors to play the voices of Zeb Tilton, the historian Henry Kittredge, and the writer and Mystic Seaport curator John Leavitt are being sought for the film Zeb — Schooner Life. Open auditions will be held at the Vineyard Playhouse on Tuesday, Dec. 18 from 3:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Interested parties should call Detrick Lawrence Productions at 508-627-8844 to make an appointment.
Catch a sneak preview of the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School’s upcoming fall theatre workshops on Tuesday, Oct. 30, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.
Theatre department students will perform free on the theatre room’s black box stage, offering a conceptual tour of the very dramatic year to come. Kate Murray, director of theatre and television at the high school, will speak about her goals for student enrichment and how the community can be a part of those dreams.
Island Theatre Workshop will hold auditions Saturday, Nov. 3 at 2 p.m. at the Federated Church parish hall in Edgartown for two coming musical productions.
Amahl and the Night Visitors, by Gian Carlo Menotti, a one-act opera directed by Lee Fierro and Peter Boak, will be performed for two weekends in January 2008.
Needed are people to play three kings and a page (one tenor and three baritones) and a chorus of women and men (soprano, alto, tenor bass.) The roles of Amahl and his mother already have been cast and are in rehearsal.
The Oak Bluffs School drama department presents the musical 1970 musical Godspell Jr. by John-Michael Tebelak with music by Stephen Schwartz next weekend. The cast and crew have been working hard since September to put together this rock musical inspired by the Gospel of Matthew. The show includes colorful costumes, story theatre and the famous songs including the hit Day by Day. The show is part of Musical Theater International’s Broadway Jr. series, which adapts famous Broadway musicals and makes them accessible to young performers and audiences.
Free Shakespeare is available this weekend, from the awardwinning drama department at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School. Shaking up their usual fall program, the student thepians are performing selected scenes from the Bard and other playwrights instead of a single play.
Tonight at 7 p.m. it’s selected scenes from As You Like It, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Romeo and Juliet.
