Livingston Taylor concerts are many things, all of them wonderful, but most they are events that break down the barriers between performer and listener. As he said in a past interview with the Gazette, the audience is the boss.

“You need them, they don’t need you,” he admitted, giving some insight into both his humility on stage and his appreciation. He says a show should feel more like a conversation with the audience.

The Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs offers a free family movie night special event with the screening of The Watsons Go To Birmingham at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, August 20. The film stars Tony-winning actress Anika Noni Rose and three-time Tony nominee David Alan Grier.

At dusk last night a single lantern lit by Gordon Long and his son Roy made its way down the center aisle of the Tabernacle in the Oak Bluffs Camp Ground. There was a collective gasp from the large crowd gathered inside the Tabernacle and around blankets and picnic baskets on the lawn.

A Place at the Table, narrated by Jeff Bridges and scored by T-Bone Burnett, is a documentary that places the spotlight on hunger here at home. It tells the stories of people struggling with food insecurity in the U.S., where 50 million people are unsure of where their next meal will come from. The Vineyard Committee on Hunger and Martha’s Vineyard Film Society will sponsor a showing of the film on Wednesday, August 21, at 7:30 p.m. at the film center at the Tisbury Marketplace in Vineyard Haven.

Each week the folks at Cinema Circus show a series of short films on Wednesday evening at the Chilmark Community center.

If the summer traffic is starting to fray your nerves, think Martha’s Vineyard Comedy Festival held at the Lampost on Circuit avenue in Oak Bluffs. The event is billed as the only profanity-free comedy fest in the nation and features primarily African American comedians who offer “originality and sophistication while on stage.”

The first annual Keren Or Literary Festival welcomes authors Julia Newman, Sarah Caravallo, Estelle Ana Baca and Paul West to the Katharine Cornell Theatre on Spring street in Vineyard Haven this Sunday, August 18, at 6 p.m. Keren Or is the only center in Israel dedicated exclusively to the education and care of children and young adults who are blind or visually impaired and have additional multiple disabilities. Support for the festival will go to the Keren Or speech therapy program.

Two trailblazing artists and their relationship is the theme of historian Henry Adams’s book Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock. Abstract impressionist Mr. Pollock let the paint fall where it may, while Mr. Benton’s style was the polar opposite. Mr. Pollock was a student of Benton’s.

The moon appears low in the south in our evening skies this weekend. The gibbous moon spends the weekend going through the zodiacal constellation Sagittarius, the southern-most constellation in the zodiac. For those walking along the Island’s south shore, the moon will be an especially impressive sight, so close to the water and to the horizon.

The moon will appear higher in the coming week as it moves farther along the zodiac, passing into the constellation Capricornus. The moon will be full Tuesday through Wednesday. The August full moon is referred to as the Sailor’s Moon.

Nothing, not even a partial road closure and some imposing detour signs, will keep people from the fair. That’s the hope of Martha’s Vineyard Agricultural Society as the 152nd annual Livestock Show and Fair begins today at the West Tisbury fair grounds on Panhandle Road.