If you stand in the A Gallery this week, you may notice that you are being watched. Eyes seem to pierce through the glass frames of 30 black and white photographs on the charcoal-colored walls of the newly-opened gallery on Uncas avenue in Oak Bluffs. The eyes follow you as you walk around the room. It’s a signature of the photography of Mariana Cook’s, whose show Justice opens this weekend.

The Martha’s Vineyard Film Center hosts a filmmaker-in-residence event with photographer/filmmaker Lauren Greenfield. Her work chronicles the youth culture, gender and consumerism in acclaimed works including Girl Culture, Fast Forward, THIN and her documentary, The Queen of Versailles. Ms. Greenfield will lead a workshop-style presentation on Thursday, August 1 at 7:30 p.m. at the film center in the Tisbury Marketplace in Vineyard Haven. A screening of two of her films will follow on Friday and Saturday.

Lori McKenna is in the backyard of her home in Stoughton less than a block from where she grew up, and she’s laughing. The woman who writes miniatures of the way life happens, who paints a tableau of marital ennui and how thin paychecks stretch is anything but dour.

“People ask me how will you get a boat on stage? What I like to say is — theatrical imagination.”

With these words, Joe Forbrich introduced a reading of his new play, The Whaleship Essex, on Monday, July 22. The staged reading was part of The Vineyard Playhouse’s Monday Night Specials series. It was performed by a group of 16 actors and actresses, two from New York and 14 from Martha’s Vineyard.

Each week the folks at Cinema Circus show a series of short films on Wednesday evening at the Chilmark Community Center. The films begin at 6 p.m. but the circus — complete with jugglers, face painters, stilt walkers, food and music — gets underway at 5 p.m. The short films are programmed each week around a central theme, introduced in the first film by Professor Projector. This week’s theme is telling stories.

Artist Tom Smith is almost breathless when he talks about his work.

“I love the line between what is formal, designed, almost constricted — and what is natural and rank,” he said. “I love the border between the cultivated and the wild.”