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.

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.

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.

There are two kinds of Shakespeare fanatics: The first group is down with the concept of William Shakespeare having written all the plays attributed to William Shakespeare. The second group believes anyone but William Shakespeare wrote the canon of sonnets and plays: It could have been Will’s young patron, the third earl of Southampton, or the proven Christopher Marlowe, or even Queen Elizabeth I in a secret need to hone another dimension of her marvelousness.

The playwright steals — lines, plots, anything that works. The playwright uses historical events, fashioning his own take on the characters within those happenings. He finds whole scenes come to him in his dreams. He writes fluidly in iambic pentameter. He doesn’t mind getting bawdy. The playwright is?

William Shakespeare, sure. But there is another correct answer: Robert Brustein.

Island Theatre Workshop, Inc. announces the start of its Island children’s winter drama season. Winter Children’s Theatre (formerly Apprentice Players) begins on Monday, Oct. 22, after school at Grace Church parish hall.

To many, the idea of doing a tour of duty in Iraq is no laughing matter. Yet for Jim McCue, along with fellow Boston comedian and friend Joey Carroll, that’s exactly what it is, as they perform stand-up comedy to bring smiles and laughter to the troops’ otherwise very serious lives.

Now the Boston comedian and author of book Embedded Comedian, Jim McCue, performs with The Sopranos’ Frank Santorelli and the Island’s Marty Nadler, on Saturday, Sept. 22, at Outerland at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport.

Renaissance House, a retreat for artists, celebrates its fifth year of survival with a benefit spoken word show on Friday, Sept. 21 at 8 p.m. at the Katharine Cornell Theatre, and the public is invited to read.

Phyllis Vecchia begins another of her popular creative drama workshops for children ages four and half to eleven, this fall at the Oak Bluffs School. The classes will be held on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 3:30 to 4:45 p.m. Classes begin on Tuesday, Oct. 2, and Thursday, Oct. 4, and run for eight weeks.

The Vineyard Playhouse is extending its season through September with a limited run of Robert Brustein’s new play The English Channel, a comic and provocative imagining of William Shakespeare’s coming of age as a playwright.