Art
The Manhattan Short Film Festival (ManhattanShort.com) has selected 12 finalists now screening across four continents this week — including here, at Vineyard Haven’s Katharine Cornell Theatre on Saturday, Sept. 27 at 7:30 p.m.
Island film lovers will have the opportunity to view and vote on the next generation of filmmakers. There were 429 entries from 42 countries. This week the finalists screen 295 times in 115 cities, from St. Petersburg, Russia to St. Kilda in Melbourne, Australia.
Artists wishing to participate in Treehouse Studios’ annual Nancy Luce show are invited to contact the gallery or submit works via e-mail to [email protected].
Works in all media will be considered for the show, which will open in October at the gallery located on State Road in West Tisbury, opposite Up-Island Cronig’s market.
A couple of years before Tiny Tim tiptoed through the tulips of America’s oddball garden of novelty singers, Mrs. Elva Miller (1907–1997) of southern California sharpened our appetite for the camp pleasure of the over-warbled, excruciating and off-pitch note. Now in the world-premiere of Mrs. Miller Does Her Thing at the Vineyard Playhouse, Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway director and writer James Lapine brings us the story of the rise and fall of this songstress and, well, the truth must be told: laughingstock.
On Sunday, Sept. 28, there will be tryouts for two original one-act musicals about Vineyard history:
Nancy Luce, The Musical was originally produced in the summer of 2007 as part of Children’s Theatre Workshop summer program, with a book by Dana Anderson and music by Linda Berg.
An Island of Women, Life on the Vineyard, 1850-1852, written by E. St. John Villard, takes place at a time when much of the male population was at sea whaling. Philip Dietterich has written the music and lyrics.
In this serialized year-long novel set on the Vineyard in real time, a native Islander (“Call me Becca”) returns home after two decades to help her eccentric Uncle Abe keep his landscaping business, Pequot, afloat. Abe has a paranoid hatred of Richard Moby, the CEO of an off-Island wholesale nursery, Broadway. Convinced that Moby wants to destroy Abe personally, and all Island-based landscaping/nursery businesses generally, Abe is obsessed with “taking down” Moby. Abe has rented a fishing boat for the Derby, knowing that Moby is also fishing.
The Federated Church of Edgartown will hold a free movie night on Thursday, Sept. 25 at 7 p.m. in the Parish House on South Summer street. The film being shown is The Road to Galveston, based on a true story and starring Cicely Tyson. The movie is the story of a woman who loses her husband and is forced to make a living for herself. She chooses to provide care for Alzheimers patients, and the story is both heartwarming and inspiring.