In an outpouring of love and support, friends from throughout Bob Dutton’s life and career pulled together over the week before he died to produce a live reading of his three-act play with lyrics, The Ivory Door.

Though Mr. Dutton did not live to watch the online debut of his work Friday morning, he did see his vision realized, his wife Molly Conole told the audience on Zoom.

“He was able to be at the dress rehearsal yesterday,” she said, through tears.

Mr. Dutton died on Thursday night, at home on the Vineyard.

Mr. Dutton grew up on the Vineyard and graduated from the regional high school in 1979. After a long career in theatre he returned to the Island with his wife and two children and became the managing director of the Martha’s Vineyard Film Society.

Among the actors and crew taking part in Friday’s play — 33 in all — more than a dozen were castmates of Mr. Dutton’s from his years as a character actor at Walt Disney World’s Adventure Club.

“He always arrived with a contagious joy,” wrote Greg Triggs, who directed The Ivory Door, in the play’s virtual program.

Others in the show included classmates of Mr. Dutton’s from Emerson College, where he earned a degree in theatre directing; comrades from theatres in Florida and on the Vineyard, former drama students, best friends and Mr. Dutton and Ms. Conole’s children, Mia Dutton and Simon Dutton.

For the many people, on Island and beyond, who knew Mr. Dutton as a student, actor, teacher, theatre director or simply as a friend, Friday’s performance was both a celebration of and testament to his life.

“This is a tale of his vision of the world,” Ms. Conole said as she introduced The Ivory Door, which Mr. Dutton based very loosely on the 1929 play of that name by A.A. Milne.

Retaining Milne’s castle-and-kings setting and the symbolic door of the title, Mr. Dutton created an entirely new set of characters and adventures to tell the tale of a perplexed young prince, Sheridan, and how he finds his way to happiness through a carved ivory door that everyone else believes is accursed.

All the characters were drawn so expertly that a physical theatre wasn’t necessary for the audience to enter into Sheridan’s world, a kingdom out of a fairytale where the only magic is in the human mind.

Mr. Dutton’s mastery of dramatic storytelling was evident not only in his characters’ fluid dialogue, but in the lyrics he wrote for the show and the stage directions — voiced by one of the performers — that brought tapestries and stained-glass windows to life.

Mr. Dutton, who came out as bisexual in recent years, also transformed the traditional fairytale ending into a celebration of inclusiveness. King Sheridan’s kingdom already recognizes plural marriage, so he legalizes same-sex unions as well and weds both his beloved boyhood friend and a wise princess, with whom he plans a family.

“Ignorance is the only enemy,” the young king tells his two spouses. “I refuse to fear the truth of who I am, and who I am with you, and also with you.”

In place of a curtain call after the more than five-hour performance, Ms. Conole returned to the screen with words of gratitude for the company.

“Thank you for this incredible gift of your time, of treasuring Bob’s many words,” she said. “You brought them all to life on such short notice, and so, so beautifully from your hearts.”

“You’ve given us the greatest gift as a family,” Ms. Conole added. “We will treasure this always.”

Simon Dutton added his thanks in the Zoom chat box, writing to his father’s friends that “(w)e are so grateful you were all able to be here to share this beautiful piece of his, which of course told his story perfectly.”