The house was full, as ever, when 95-year-old Helen (Hellcat) Lamb took the stage at the Camp Jabberwocky studio. The sweltering heat was amplified by the spotlight that ignited her usual white blouse and matching, freshly styled shock of white hair. She looked out into the crowd sternly, and waited for a relative quiet to settle on the room before beginning: “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves, did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogroves, and the mome raths outgrabe . . ..”

If there’s to be a central tragedy in one’s life, odds-on it’s bound up in the heartbreak of an unhappy family. In Athol Fugard’s seminal play, Master Harold and the Boys, which premiered in 1982 at the Yale Repertory Theatre before going on to an extended run at the Lyceum on Broadway, the playwright depicts a family’s dysfunction for the specific and fascinating angst all of its own, and also as a microcosm for the dark heart of the Family of Man as it rolled out in the decades of apartheid in South Africa.

Call him a professional fighter, a specialist swashbuckler, the Errol Flynn of our era: Broadway combat choreographer David Brimmer next week bursts onto the Island stage for a week-long residency. He will teach a free public workshop for children and adults as well as work intensively with students at the regional high school.

IMP All Things Theatre Camp will start its sixth year on Monday, July 6. The camp is part of a year-round theatre program where kids ages six to 18 are given the opportunity to explore theatre. Held at the Edgartown School, IMP camp is about choice. Children are given the opportunity to choose their path as they explore all types of theatre. They can choose full or half-day options, one-week or two-week sessions and different types of theatre. A theme encompasses the work of each IMP camp session.

Casting Calls

An Island of Women, an original musical, has begun rehearsals ahead of a premiere in June. Two singing roles are open, for women between 16 and 30. The roles are Hannah Norton Vincent, a young wife whose husband is at sea whaling, and Grace Mayhew, who is working in a Fall River mill while she waits for her fiancé to return from sea. Both are important roles with singing.

For details, call 508-627-2529 or e-mail mvhistory@earthlink.net.

Anyone who spent any time on the Vineyard before 1984, the year Lillian Hellman died (she was born in 1905), has a story to tell about the writer’s mean-spiritedness, from the number of nurses’ aides she fired in a single week, to her scowl at the Helio’s waitress who complimented Ms. Hellman on her mayonnaise, to the slightly ghastly sight of her shuffling down Main street, Vineyard Haven, leaning on the arm of a white-uniformed caregiver, a cigarette dangling from the famous writer’s grimacing lips.

A groundbreaking new play based on an imaginary conversation between Anne Frank and Emmett Till comes to the Vineyard Playhouse on Monday at 7 p.m.

This staged reading of Anne and Emmett features prologue narration by Academy award-winning actor Morgan Freeman and an original score by 16-year-old musical prodigy Joshua Coyne. There will be a brief question and answer session and an informal reception following the performance

Island of Women

An Island of Women, an original musical, looks at life on the Vineyard between 1850 and 1852 when much of the male population was off whaling. It was created by Island historian and director E. St. John Villard. It’s music was composed by retired Methodist minister of music Phil Dietterich, who is well know to Vineyard audiences for his original compositions for many local groups, as well as his work for the Scottish Society.

The stage is set: Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School drama students will perform tomorrow in the semifinals of the statewide drama guild competition with an original play written by drama teacher Kate Murray and students Kirkland Beck and Kenny Stone. Islanders are invited to attend the contest performance of the play, called Letters, in Fall River, to see a production that already has earned the cast and crew awards.

Island Theatre Workshop presents PigPen Theatre’s latest show, The Old Man and the Old Moon, for a limited engagement at the Katharine Cornell Theatre on Sunday and Monday, July 5 and 6 at 8 p.m. The Old Man and the Old Moon is a tale of an old man who must abandon his duties of refilling the moon every month, to cross the seas in search of his missing wife. The show runs just under one hour and is appropriate for all ages, both children and adults. Tickets are $10, available at the door.