What happened at the end of high school that you would rather forget? And what would it be like if your dark past was suddenly shoved in your face ten years later? By someone you trusted?

This is the premise of the play Tape by Stephen Bender beginning its run next Thursday, June 2 at the Vineyard Playhouse and continuing for two weeks. Tape first appeared at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in 2000 and was later adapted into a film starring Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman.

Marvelous miniature mermaids merge in movement on Martha’s Vineyard making music and merriment and maybe mayhem.

The Vineyard Playhouse’s current production of Tape, opens on a set that itself poses a plot twist and a conundrum at the same time: Lights bear down on a typical off-highway motel room with twin beds, a banal color scheme of beige, gold and brown, a sink on one side rimmed by overhead white globes. Over in the right-hand corner, a vague charcoal-hued stain hints that a repaint of the unadorned walls is long overdue.

It’s a three-person play and a two-bed motel room. Something’s already intriguingly off-kilter.

James Joyce Returns to the Stage

“One by one we’re all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.”

Barbara Reynolds took out an old photo album in a resource room at the Edgartown School last week, the pages tinted with age but the memories still fresh as though her students were sitting next to her at the table.

Improv Impresses

Here’s your chance to say, years from now when these teenagers show up on Saturday Night Live or Second City, “I saw them when...”

The IMPers have been accepted once again to the prestigious Teen Comedy Festival in Chicago, and they will show the hometown crowd what they’ve got with a benefit performance next Friday, April 29, at the Grange Hall Theatre in West Tisbury.

The Vineyard Playhouse hopes to raise $1 million this summer in the first phase of a $5 million capital campaign that encompasses the renovation, restoration and expansion of the historic theatre on Church street in Vineyard Haven.

The restoration already has begun. With Community Preservation Act funds and private donations, the playhouse has installed new wood clapboard siding and windows on three sides of the building, and a new fire-safety sprinkler system.

The Island theatre group ArtFarm is gearing up for a groundbreaking third season, with a summer lineup true to its mission to collaborate, educate and innovate.

First up is the second annual New Writers, New Plays festival of readings by emerging playwrights, which is a coproduction between ArtFarm and Vineyard Arts Project. Playwrights, directors and cast will be in residence for four weeks developing scripts, and will present readings of the plays on July 7, 8 and 9 at the Vineyard Arts Project at 215 Upper Main street in Edgartown.

Few in the audience were unmoved at the end of Assertions, a song, dance and theatre performance about bullying.

The Thursday night performance took place at the Performing Arts Center at the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, and was a collaborative effort among Island schools — both the regional high school and the charter school — IMP Improv for kids, YMCA dancers, Joanne Cassidy and other musical guests.

The Vineyard Playhouse will hold open auditions for its summer main stage season on Saturday, April 30, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the playhouse on Church street in downtown Vineyard Haven.