Miracle Is How Ageless Morals Translate in Easy Punchlines
Sofi Thanhauser

Again and again, it seems, Christmas brings us face to face with the same old question. Where does a rabidly materialistic society like our own get off celebrating the man who taught poverty by reveling in a superfluity of consumer goods? Perhaps they didn’t juggle exactly the same paradox, but the monks of 12th century England labored over the same vexing question of how best to reconcile Christian piety with the pull of earthly delights.

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Playhouse Has Auditions For Family Holiday Show

The Vineyard Playhouse is holding open auditions for Earl Hamner Jr.’s The Homecoming, adapted by Christopher Sergel and directed by M.J. Bruder Munafo. Auditions will be held on Thursday, Oct. 25 and Friday, Oct. 26 from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Vineyard Playhouse, 24 Church street in Vineyard Haven.

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Zeb Tilton Filmmakers Will Audition Islanders

Actors to play the voices of Zeb Tilton, the historian Henry Kittredge, and the writer and Mystic Seaport curator John Leavitt are being sought for the film Zeb — Schooner Life. Open auditions will be held at the Vineyard Playhouse on Tuesday, Dec. 18 from 3:30 to 8:30 p.m.

Interested parties should call Detrick Lawrence Productions at 508-627-8844 to make an appointment.

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Ready for Their Closeup, Drama Students Give Tuesday Preview of Fall Shorts Season

Catch a sneak preview of the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School’s upcoming fall theatre workshops on Tuesday, Oct. 30, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.

Theatre department students will perform free on the theatre room’s black box stage, offering a conceptual tour of the very dramatic year to come. Kate Murray, director of theatre and television at the high school, will speak about her goals for student enrichment and how the community can be a part of those dreams.

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Creative Drama Sessions Launched for Children

Phyllis Vecchia begins another of her popular creative drama workshops for children ages four and half to eleven, this fall at the Oak Bluffs School. The classes will be held on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 3:30 to 4:45 p.m. Classes begin on Tuesday, Oct. 2, and Thursday, Oct. 4, and run for eight weeks.

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Embedded Comedian Stands Up for Troops

To many, the idea of doing a tour of duty in Iraq is no laughing matter. Yet for Jim McCue, along with fellow Boston comedian and friend Joey Carroll, that’s exactly what it is, as they perform stand-up comedy to bring smiles and laughter to the troops’ otherwise very serious lives.

Now the Boston comedian and author of book Embedded Comedian, Jim McCue, performs with The Sopranos’ Frank Santorelli and the Island’s Marty Nadler, on Saturday, Sept. 22, at Outerland at the Martha’s Vineyard Airport.

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Playhouse Toys With Great Elizabethan Nerd
Holly Nadler

There are two kinds of Shakespeare fanatics: The first group is down with the concept of William Shakespeare having written all the plays attributed to William Shakespeare. The second group believes anyone but William Shakespeare wrote the canon of sonnets and plays: It could have been Will’s young patron, the third earl of Southampton, or the proven Christopher Marlowe, or even Queen Elizabeth I in a secret need to hone another dimension of her marvelousness.

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Island Theatre Workshop Kicks off Children’s Class

Island Theatre Workshop, Inc. announces the start of its Island children’s winter drama season. Winter Children’s Theatre (formerly Apprentice Players) begins on Monday, Oct. 22, after school at Grace Church parish hall.

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English Channel Will Appear at Playhouse

The Vineyard Playhouse is extending its season through September with a limited run of Robert Brustein’s new play The English Channel, a comic and provocative imagining of William Shakespeare’s coming of age as a playwright.

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Brustein’s Shakespearean Dreams Alight in The English Channel
Lauren Martin

The playwright steals — lines, plots, anything that works. The playwright uses historical events, fashioning his own take on the characters within those happenings. He finds whole scenes come to him in his dreams. He writes fluidly in iambic pentameter. He doesn’t mind getting bawdy. The playwright is?

William Shakespeare, sure. But there is another correct answer: Robert Brustein.

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