Not Off-Broadway, on to Broadway
Jonah Lipsky

From the streetfront, the Vineyard Arts Project appears to be another large house on Main street. There is no hint that past its picket fence is unfolding, in turn: life on the Texas-Mexico border; family drama at a racially-charged estate; and people singing and dancing about the financial crisis.

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Playhouse Gets Its Mojo Working

This week the play 5 Mojo Secrets began its run at the Vineyard Playhouse. The play tells the story of a successful African American couple as they try to sort out what happened to their once happy marriage. It is a subject every married couple, even the happiest, can relate to. After all, how do two separate individuals retain their own identity and aspirations while also becoming that one unit known as husband and wife? It is a challenge that many decide is just too great.

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Edgartown School Play

Edgartown School Play

Mark the calendars, the Edgartown school play takes place next Friday and Saturday, Nov. 4 and 5 at 7 p.m.

This year’s production is called Bluebeard and is billed as a spooky musical tale. Bluebeard is based on a cautionary tale involving sisters Mary Stephanie and Mary Elizabeth and their search for the man of their dreams. Of course, when trying to follow a dream, it is not uncommon for nightmares to infiltrate the landscape. The show visits both the humorous and haunting sides of this journey.

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Shakespeare of Hollywood on Board

Shakespeare of Hollywood on Board

Each summer the folks at the Vineyard Playhouse host a series they call Monday Night Specials. This summer’s series began last Monday and runs through the summer to August 29. The idea is simple. Host one-night-only readings of plays. If you’ve never been to a reading, the experience is well worth it.

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Development Heaven

James Lapine (pictured) has won the Tony Award three times for the best book of a musical, for Into the Woods, Passion and Falsettos. His list of other Broadway and Hollywood credits is long and illustrious.

Mandy Hackett is the associate artistic director of the Public Theatre in New York city, one of the most vibrant and important performance spaces in New York city and therefore, by extension, the world.

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Swimming to Martha’s Vineyard

Swimming to Martha’s Vineyard

Spalding Gray was a brilliant monologist. He walked onstage, sat down at an empty desk, except for a glass of water, and proceeded to mesmerize the audience. He did not need props, a backdrop, nor bells and whistles of any kind. His subject was his own life, weaving autobiography with an emotional terrain of depth and complexity.

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Amish Path to Forgiveness Is About Not Asking Why
Jonah Lipsky

The Amish Project is a play that faces big questions head on, including how do you forgive the murder of five innocent little girls?

The play is based on the tragic events of Oct. 2, 2006 when a gunman entered a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and shot 10 young girls, killing five of them.

Later the Amish people of that community publicly forgave the gunman in a service of reconciliation. Eventually, the West Nickel Mines schoolhouse was torn down and the New Hope School was built at another location.

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Masterpiece of Slow Torture Creeps Skillfully From the Page to Stage
Holly Nadler

The late great star of the stage, Katharine Cornell, who lies buried behind the theatre she bequeathed to the town of Tisbury, would approve of the choice of The Turn of the Screw for the Island Theatre Workshop’s Halloween presentation.

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Improv Show for Kids

Improv Show for Kids

Nightmares were never so much fun. During the past two weeks the campers at Imp have been learning the ways of improv — the fast action, quick reflexes of theatrical art Yoda would be proud of. But who’s to say, once the mind is unleashed to improvise at will, how the subconscious will be affected.

On Friday, July 29, you are about to find out as the campers present The Dreams and Nightmares Show at the Edgartown School.

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Morphoses

This weekend the Vineyard Arts Project is presenting a performance by Morphoses, a dance company that has been in residence at VAP since Sept. 11. During this time the troupe has been working on a show entitled Bacchae by resident artistic director Lucca Vegetti.

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