Island Theatre Workshop’s Children’s Theatre summer program opens for the season on Monday, June 28, at the Sailing Camp Park on the Lagoon in Oak Bluffs. There will be four two-week sessions for ages 6 to 18 from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Nurturing self-expression with immersion in voice, movement and acting training in a unique and supportive environment, students rehearse and perform an original play at the end of each session, with the support and guidance of experienced staff.
It’s a Wonderful Life, the radio play written by Philip Grecian based on the film by Frank Capra, is being performed on Dec. 17 at 8 p.m. and Dec. 18 at 1 p.m. by the Vineyard Playhouse at the regional high school’s performing arts center.
This live stage “radio show” is recommended for ages eight and older.
The IMPers holiday show is this Saturday, Dec. 17, beginning at 8 p.m. at the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven.
For those out of the know, IMP is the Island’s teen professional improv troupe. The show is a chance to help them out as they preview material slated for submission to the 2012 Chicago Improv Festival. But, of course, not everything will be scripted. Audience members will be asked to arrive loaded with holiday suggestion from which the improv group will weave their hilarious magic.
For those on the Vineyard who have witnessed the past two summer productions from the PigPen Theatre Company you know what it means to be completely transported, body and soul, to, without gilding the lily one bit, a place of imagination so powerful adults have been known to become toddlers on the spot: mute, with finger outstretched and prone to falling down in fits of giggles and wonderment. Kids, well, they simply become transfixed, the feeling so strong they refuse to watch television for weeks afterwards. It just doesn’t compare.
It’s A Wonderful Life, for anyone who has accidentally missed the 20th century, was originally a 1946 movie directed by Frank Capra starring Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, and Lionel Barrymore. This weekend, the Vineyard Playhouse is rebooting the story as a radio drama written by Phillip Grecian, the kind where the audience is stationed in front of a clutter of equipment and watches while a character actor takes out a stick of gum and chomps on it, and the sound guy hits the glockenspiel.
Some call her Big Roz. Others call her Lady Roz G. Most just call her drop-dead funny.
Roz G. is on the Vineyard July 7 through 9, as the opening performer of a summer of comedy thanks to the folks at Knock-Knock productions. All performances take place at the Katharine Cornell Theatre located at 54 Spring street in Vineyard Haven.
Leslie Stark is a busy man this weekend. At the helm directing a group of short plays by David Ives on Sunday, he is also the man at the wheel on Saturday, Nov. 12, for reading Arnold Rabin’s new play, Quartet for a Queen. The reading takes place at 6:30 p.m. at Howes House in West Tisbury.
Built on Stilts, the annual dance festival held at the Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs, opened last night to begin its eight day run with a bit of drumming, belly dancing and a group of five-year-olds taking the stage fresh from their yearlong “Stiltshop” choreography class. What’s on the schedule for tonight is anyone’s guess, though, as the show never repeats itself.
Short plays, like short stories, have never caught on with the popular culture to the extent to which they so richly deserve. And yet they offer such a better return, really, for the public’s entertainment dollar. More stories, more sets of characters, more writers, directors and all of the other creative elements that go into live theatre for the same single ticket price.
You know about A Streetcar Named Desire. You also know about The Glass Menagerie, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Rose Tattoo and on and on. The work of Tennessee Williams is celebrated on stage and screen, but if for some reason you haven’t seen or read his work, the time is now.
