Auditions for Young Actors: Goldilocks’ Musical Twist

Do you like to act? sing? dance? Are you between the ages of 8 and 18? Then here is a performance opportunity for you: IMP is producing the family fun play with music Bears Beware! Goldilocks Is in Your Town, by Donna Swift and Ross Mihalko, lyrics by Ross Mihalko, music by Brian Weiland and A.J. Robb. No experience is needed, just a desire to work hard and have fun.

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A Wonderful Life, a Playhouse Tradition

Live radio returns to the Vineyard Playhouse, as It’s a Wonderful Life: The Radio Play makes its second consecutive showing as the annual family holiday production. The popular play is based on the Frank Capra film, adapted by Philip Grecian and directed by playhouse artistic director, MJ Bruder Munafo.

This classic tale plays for ten more performances, and one was last night. Shows are Thursdays through Mondays, through Dec. 21 at the playhouse in downtown Vineyard Haven.

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Bringing the Bard to Today’s Groundlings
Holly Nadler

T here is probably not a soul — not even an Oxford don who’s written his umpteenth thesis on King Lear — who takes Shakespeare so seriously that he can’t enjoy a little fooling around with the canon. Nothing is sacred when it comes to Shakespeare, even though hordes in every generation of theatregoers since the bard lived and wrote (up until he died in 1616) have pretty fairly worshipped him.

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A Wonderful Life: Rejoicing on the Radio
Holly Nadler

C hristmastime is predictable: swirls of white lights; favorite carols that young kids first learn as Chet’s Nuts Roasting on an Open Fire and Hark the Harold Angels Sing; dustings of snow, real in the East, fake in the West; and the viewing of classic Christmas movies such as It’s a Wonderful Life, directed by Frank Capra and starring Jimmy Stewart. For the past two Christmases, the Vineyard Playhouse in Vineyard Haven has mounted a delightful production of It’s a Wonderful Life, The Radio Play (written by Philip Grecian).

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From the Page to the Stage, the Pick of the Crop

From the Page to the Stage, the Pick of the Crop

Three original plays, penned by Islanders Taffy McCarthy, John Ortman and Peter Palches, will move from the page to the stage for two weekends in a row at the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven in an Island Theatre Workshop presentation called Pick of the Crop.

Longtime Island Theatre Workshop artistic director Lee Fierro directs Peter Palches’ Sam Meets Maria, or Still Here, which features Island actors Niki Patton and George Ricci.

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Four Decades Later, The Island Theatre Workshop Comes Home
Lauren Martin

The Island’s oldest players, the self-described vagabonds of Island Theatre Workshop, have found a home. After 41 years on an endless Vineyard shuffle, the troupe aims to set up shop in the cozy building on Music street in West Tisbury that housed the town’s library for 100 years.

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Small Town Deals With Hate: Showing on Stages Worldwide
Lauren Martin

In the small town where he lived, there is no memorial to Matthew Shepard. The fence post where he, an openly gay man of 21, hung dying for some 18 hours, tied up after being pistol-whipped, has been torn down. The bar from which he was lured to his murder is gone.

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After-Christmas Carol

After-Christmas Carol

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Three Short Plays Are Long on Island Talent on Script and Stage
Holly Nadler

Once and for all can the question be answered: Can we go home again? Playwrights from Chekhov to Wilder have renewed the debate and, of course, the answer will always have to be Maybe, depending on the place and who was — and may still be — in it.

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My Kingdom for a Sock Puppet: Antony and Cleopatra

There are few plays in history that attempt as much spectacle on stage as Antony and Cleopatra, a romantic tragedy of war, lust, politics, lust, betrayal and lust. “This script is frequently quite over-the-top, and the lead characters so histrionic about their feelings for each other that it borders on farce,” explains Nicole Galland, who is cocreator with Chelsea McCarthy of Shakespeare for the Masses, an off-season project produced by the Vineyard Playhouse to make Shakespeare’s plays accessible, fun and affordable (as a matter of fact, it’s free).

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