Arts & Entertainment
To the untrained eye the scene was this: two adults on stage, one speaking in an English accent, the other in a cross between a buccaneer’s snarl and a schoolyard bully. Five kids looked expectantly at their director, an adult on hands and knees, who crawled dramatically across the Vineyard Playhouse stage. The cast watched seriously for a good half-minute before all, director included, erupted into uncontrollable, side-clutching giggles.
“Book clubs are frustrating affairs,” says Philip Weinstein, a professor of English at Swarthmore College who will be running one of these irritating to-dos starting Thursday in Aquinnah and traveling through five town libraries during the spring. “But they’re provocative, too,” he qualifies, sipping tea in the brightly-lit front room of his Aquinnah home. Mr. Weinstein hopes this will be particularly true of the up-coming discussions, which will take in five novels dealing with race in the American experience.
Open Mike at Island Co-Housing, a new monthly series that continues Friday, Feb. 1 at 6 p.m., is designed to encourage any and all youngsters to play and enjoy each other’s music.
When organizer Paul Lazes read an article in the Gazette a few months back about surveys revealing the alarming attempted suicide rate at the high school, he decided he needed to take action. “It is my firm belief that a vibrant music scene of young performers is achievable on the Vineyard,” he said.
The Martha’s Vineyard Hospital’s Center for Women’s Health has announced that Nancy Leport, a certified nurse midwife, has joined the center’s medical practice.
Ms. Leport, a longtime Island resident, completed her midwifery training at Columbia University in 1997. She previously served the Vineyard community as a nurse in the maternity department of the hospital.
Auditions for One Acts
Island Theatre Workshop will be presenting two programs of one acts on the second and third weekend in March.
Open auditions for these productions are on Saturday, Jan. 26, at 11 a.m. Katharine Cornell Theatre.
Leslie Stark, who made his directing debut in last year’s one act program, will return with another new play, This Seat Is Taken. Xavier Powers will offer Eugene O’Neill’s Sniper. Artistic director Lee Fierro and Kevin Ryan have not selected the works they will present.
On a recent Wednesday morning, Michelle Nepton, enrollment specialist at Vineyard Health Care Access, took a quick moment in between clients to put on a pot of coffee. It was the second full pot of the day. It was only 10:30.
