Director MJ Bruder Munafo is seeking little fairies and wood sprites for this season’s Vineyard Playhouse production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Girls and boys ages 5 to 10 and under 4’9” tall are invited to apply for up to 12 open roles in the production. The children will perform an average of twice a week on a flexible rotating schedule agreed upon by the parents and the stage manager.
It’s A Wonderful Life, for anyone who has accidentally missed the 20th century, was originally a 1946 movie directed by Frank Capra starring Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, and Lionel Barrymore. This weekend, the Vineyard Playhouse is rebooting the story as a radio drama written by Phillip Grecian, the kind where the audience is stationed in front of a clutter of equipment and watches while a character actor takes out a stick of gum and chomps on it, and the sound guy hits the glockenspiel.
It’s a Wonderful Life, the radio play written by Philip Grecian based on the film by Frank Capra, is being performed on Dec. 17 at 8 p.m. and Dec. 18 at 1 p.m. by the Vineyard Playhouse at the regional high school’s performing arts center.
This live stage “radio show” is recommended for ages eight and older.
The IMPers holiday show is this Saturday, Dec. 17, beginning at 8 p.m. at the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven.
For those out of the know, IMP is the Island’s teen professional improv troupe. The show is a chance to help them out as they preview material slated for submission to the 2012 Chicago Improv Festival. But, of course, not everything will be scripted. Audience members will be asked to arrive loaded with holiday suggestion from which the improv group will weave their hilarious magic.
For those on the Vineyard who have witnessed the past two summer productions from the PigPen Theatre Company you know what it means to be completely transported, body and soul, to, without gilding the lily one bit, a place of imagination so powerful adults have been known to become toddlers on the spot: mute, with finger outstretched and prone to falling down in fits of giggles and wonderment. Kids, well, they simply become transfixed, the feeling so strong they refuse to watch television for weeks afterwards. It just doesn’t compare.
Veteran Hollywood comedy writer Marty Nadler will be performing his one-man show, Very Vineyard 2011, at Grace Episcopal Church in Vineyard Haven, on Saturday, July 9, at 7 p.m.
Mr. Nadler’s writing, producing and performing career spans more than three decades. In television, he served as script consultant for The Odd Couple, story editor and head writer for Happy Days, contributing writer for Sesame Street and guest writer for Saturday Night Live.”
Currently, Venus in Fur, the new play by David Ives, is appearing on Broadway. The show gained stellar reviews last year when it opened off Broadway and the performance of ingenue actress Nina Arianda has mesmerized critics. This week’s New Yorker has a feature on her.
For people who are scared (or uninterested) in the work of William Shakespeare, the Vineyard is a good place to get over it. The Vineyard Playhouse’s summer Shakespeare in the Amphitheatre is as playful and robust as anything on Nickelodeon, and in the off-season, Shakespeare for the Masses makes the Bard seem as accessible as an HBO series.
The Vineyard Playhouse is starting up its fall season this weekend with a series of short plays entitled Hot Tickets.
On Saturday and Sunday, both nights at 7:30 p.m., the evening will feature The Graduation of Grace by Wendy Kesselman, The Last Appointment by Madge Kaplan, and Slow Train Coming by Maureen Hourihan. The following weekend the plays will be Maker’s Mark by Alexandra Bullen The Lovers by Marisa Michelson and Joshua H. Cohen.
The Vineyard Playhouse has been awarded a prestigious $10,000 grant from the Shubert Foundation Inc., according to an announcement by the playhouse artistic director MJ Bruder Munafo and board president Gerry Yukevich.