The Edgartown School presents the classic musical comedy Once Upon a Mattress. The play was originally created at a summer camp and opened on Broadway in 1959. It featured the debut of a talented young lady named Carol Burnett.
The cast includes over 25 Edgartown School students in grades six through eight, with stage direction by Donna Swift, musical direction by Beth Carr, stage management by Mariah Mac-Kenzie, sets by Alison Carr and sound by William Fligor and Peter Sawyer,
Taffy McCarthy is solitary on stage in the literal whole-nine-yards of white satin bridal paraphernalia; the gown is too long for her customary hopping and bopping.
In this Island Theatre Workshop (ITW) rehearsal of the first of five short original plays — banded together under the title Pick of the Crop — Ms. McCarthy portrays a hill country bride-to-be called Sis. The monologue, One Last Look, was written by the actor herself.
All original plays, all written, directed and performed by Vineyarders, make up Island Theatre Workshop’s next program, Pick of the Crop.
The program alternates, with Just One Look (written by Taffy McCarthy, directed by Kaf Warman) and H.O.P.E. (written and directed by Allison Carr) on Thursdays and Saturdays and Envia (written by Kelly DuMar and directed by Lee Fierro), Separation Tango (written and directed by Wayne Greenwell) and Closure (written by GR Russell, directed by Lee Fierro) on Fridays and Sundays.
There’s a place on the Vineyard where the boundaries are constantly changing and forms of artistic expression take on new meanings and challenges. It’s a bracing environment where the creative process is valued over the end result, where audiences regularly give standing ovations, not because they are easy critics but because they appreciate the hard work and dedication that goes into this work.
Open Casting Call
Calling all actors, directors and technicians. Your moment to shine, or at least strut your stuff, has arrived. This Sunday, Sept. 19 from 1 to 4 p.m. the Island Theatre Workshop is holding an open casting call for its October 21 Pick of the Crop play festival.
Whether you lean toward laughing or crying is just fine because parts are available in both comedic and dramatic plays. Just make sure you are between the ages of twenty-five and sixty.
“Astonish me!” Sergei Diaghilev famously demanded of the poet Jean Cocteau; this past week and the next at the Vineyard Playhouse — until Sept. 16 — the theatre does exactly that. From the moment the audience arrives and is ushered not to the theatre but to tables and chairs downstairs in a pub setting or, as the trio of actors all iterate, “a lounge bar, really,” the astonishment begins.