The play's the thing

By CK Wolfson - August 23, 2007

This season the Vineyard Playhouse celebrates its 25th year, making it one of the country's longest continuously running community theaters. It began in 1982 as collaboration between Eileen Wilson and Isabella McKamy Blake, two friends from Westport, Conn., who bought the building from the Masons in 1982 in order to create a summer theater on the Island. The little theater, 120 seats, has grown into a recognized venue for showcasing new work, provocative material, and nationally celebrated talent. It is no longer the typical summer theatre.

Artistic director and producer MJ Bruder Munafo, who performed on stage in the 1980s in a production of "Bus Stop," remembers using the building in the winter for Theatre Arts Productions, directing a production of Lillian Hellman's "The Children's Hour," in which her stepdaughter, Jenik Munafo, performed. "Knock, Knock," by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and satirist Jules Feiffer, was also part of the Vineyard Playhouse's first season in 1982."

What began as a small summer stock effort has evolved into a year-round institution that impacts many segments of the Island community. Led by Ms. Munafo, together with artistic associates Joann Green Breuer and Jon Lipsky, resident designer Steve Zablotny, and an intensely dedicated staff, the Playhouse combines its professional summer season with its function as an Island community theater.

As a relevant part of the larger American theater community, the Playhouse often features productions that involve established artists, actors, directors, and writers such as Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Brustein, Jules Feiffer, and John Melanosky, the award-winning lighting director.

During the summer season the focus is on newer work and American playwrights rather than on farces, comedies, and musicals. The Playhouse premiered Eve Enselor's "The Vagina Monologues," before it went to New York; presented "Dirty Blonde," with Claudia Shear, Zora Neale Hurston's "Spunk" and Spalding Gray in a performance for monologues. Last season seasonal resident Robert Brustein, drama critic for The New Republic, and the founding director of the American Repertory Theatre and Yale Repertory Theatre, debuted a new dramatic work, "Spring Forward, Fall Back." Playhouse audiences are becoming accustomed to coming to theater prepared to be provoked as well as entertained.

In September, Mr. Brustein is presenting another new work. Described as having a surprising approach and revealing insights, "The English Channel," focuses on its two main characters, Shakespeare and Marlow, and promises to leave the audience amazed.

During the summer season, in addition to its main stage productions, the theater keeps busy with The Fabulists, a Saturday morning repertory company performing children's plays; Teenprov classes; and the Summer Stars, a children's arts and theater camp where the campers present a play each week. A Shakespeare play is presented at the Amphitheater at the Tashmoo Overlook, and at the Monday Night Specials theater luminaries such as Mia Farrow, Tony Shalhoub, and Diane Wiest present readings of new work. The playhouse also participates in a college intern program that offers college students experiences in all aspects of theater production.

And there's more. Year-round events include Island Interludes, a program in the spring that showcases Islands writers, actors, and directors, giving them a chance to demonstrate their talents; the Great American Classics series is presented in the fall, followed by the holiday shows in winter.

The children's theater programming has emerged as a very effective and popular part of the Playhouse schedule. In the Fourth Grade Theater Project, which was started by Ms. Munafo, fourth graders from each of the Island's schools participate in creating plots, characters, and working on every part of theatrical productions. Professionals who edit their scripts and direct their plays, which are performed for the Island community, guide students' efforts.

Joann Green Breuer comments, "It's a theater in which there exists a fervent collaboration among community and professional theater workers." She pauses, then adds, "And often it's impossible to find any distinction between them."

The Vineyard Playhouse, while determined not to be regarded simply as "an Island theater," remains responsive to the Island community and to the Island's character and traditions. "We all bring our life experiences to this," Ms. Breuer says. "There are productions which make use of the atmosphere, culture, and traditions of the Island."