Just Say Yes to Improv, IMP After-School Classes Begin

The art of improv is the art of saying yes. In other words, whatever is offered up during the performance by the audience or fellow actors, the main ingredient to success is to go with it.

Sounds like a sound philosophy for life or at least for getting through the tough, or merely odd moments, that pop up each day. And what better time in one’s life to embrace this message than when we are young.

Enter, stage left, IMP improv for kids.

Read More

Chris Abbot Bids Adieu, Again, As Tisbury Theatre Impresario
Holly Nadler

The scent of mothballs had no chance to cling to Chris Abbot. Last year he retired from his teaching job, which included directing the annual school play at the Tisbury School. But only a few weeks ago, school principal Richie Smith inveigled him to return to the boards for Mr. Abbot’s third pass, rolled out this past weekend, of the musical Bye Bye Birdie.

Read More

Getting Gleeful

Getting Gleeful

The newly formed song-and-dance group MV Glee will debut next Sunday, Feb. 13, with a 7 p.m. show at Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven.

The show includes the IMPers, IMP’s high school improv troupe, who will create a never-before-seen Glee episode based on audience suggestions.

MV Glee is directed by musician/composer Mike Benjamin and dancer/choreographer Sandy Stone Benjamin. The IMPers are directed by IMP founder Donna Swift.

Read More

Student Theatre

Student Theatre

A silly buffoon and a whiz kid saving the world will be the featured one-act plays performed by students from the charter school at the Vineyard Playhouse on Friday, April 1 and Saturday, April 2.

Read More

The Yard Names New Artistic Director

The former head of New York’s Dance Theater Workshop, David R. White, last week joined the Yard as consulting artistic director.

Read More

Casting Call

Casting Call

Auditions are being held on Thursday, April 21 and Friday, April 22 for ten speaking roles in Policing in America, a video project of Detrick Lawrence Productions of Edgartown. These are paid positions for filming which will take place on May 4 and 5.

Auditions are by appointment and will be held between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. at 140 Cooke street in Edgartown.

Read More

Feeling Fourth Grade

Feeling Fourth Grade

Do you remember who you were, let alone what you thought in the fourth grade? And even if you do, ah, Miss Fenner who yelled so ferociously one day she popped a blood vessel in her eye, Randy Kibler and his new hairdo like a dog with mange and Tammy Kerchner with the ski-sloped nose and macrame vests whose parents were a bit nervous because you came by every single day to visit, was it ever immortalized on stage?

Read More

Music! Right Here on Martha’s Vineyard!
Holly Nadler

The major repercussion for you, the audience member, of attending a production, anywhere, anytime, of Broadway’s great classic The Music Man, is your own zany behavior the morning after. The moment you open your eyes, you’ll begin a whispered verse, “What can I do, my dear, to make it clear?

Read More

Eat Dinner, Watch Dessert

Eat Dinner, Watch Dessert

Before you head to the sweet shop, how about a trip to France.

This Friday, Feb. 18, before the evening performance of Willy Wonka, Les Troubadours are putting together a French meal to be held at the high school cafeteria.

The meal will be served from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. and consists of chicken marsala or vegetarian ratatouille with salad, rice pilaf and green beans.

The cost is $12 for adults and $8 for children with proceeds benefiting the Les Troubadours French club spring trip to France.

Read More

Extra Helpings for High School Musical
Holly Nadler

The program for last weekend’s high school production of Willy Wonka included this director’s note: What could be more apropos in February than a musical about becoming the owner of the most magical chocolate factory on earth? Yes, the perfect antidote for cabin fever on the Island, extra helpings of dessert.

And there was a voluptuousness to every aspect of the play. There was a cast of thousands, or so it seemed, as the high school drama department all pitched in ladling out chocolaty goodness in every scene.

Read More

Pages