Press Reviews and Articles
Playhouse Opens Summer Season With Poetic Passion
Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse opens its summer main stage series June 22 with a play about a pair of American writers whose 30-year friendship was as deeply devoted as the most passionate lifelong love affair.
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Arts Beat: ‘Dear Elizabeth’
Playhouse artistic and executive director MJ Bruder Munafo chose this play for artistic and practical reasons, saying, “I like Ruhl, real life stories, poetry, and Elizabeth Bishop. It’s perfect for our intimate theater.”
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She’s devoted to doodling
Take a closer look at Kate Feiffer’s new exhibit at M.V. Playhouse.
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Sneak Peek
M.V. Playhouse offers Monday Night Special series this summer.
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Summer stage
M.V. Playhouse offers everything from romance to the blues to Shakespeare.
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Cabaret collaboration
Elizabeth Parrish, Mark Fifer, and Paola Styron transform cabaret into theater.
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Finding Her True Self in Song
Shelagh Hackett lost no time pulling the audience into the story her life with the first words of Kiss Me I’m Irish, her one-woman play at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse last weekend...
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Going solo
In a theatrical version of “It takes a village,” Hackett recently related the serendipitous path she took in creating “Kiss Me, I’m Irish,” her new solo show premiering this Friday and Saturday at the M.V. Playhouse as part of its Spring Solo Shows.
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Molly Conole sings her story
Solo show takes the stage at M.V. Playhouse this weekend.
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Playhouse Opens Series of One-Woman Shows
Last weekend at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse, audiences witnessed the transformation of a dumpy, embittered divorcée into a polished, professional and optimistic single woman in Lynne Adams’s solo show Two-Faced.
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Let the Solo Shows begin
Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse will open its 2019 season of live theater with a series of solo shows throughout the month of May. Kicking off the lineup will be a comedy written and performed by actress and writer Lynne Adams.
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Putting the pieces together
Artists Jenik Munafo Khelalfa and Cindy Kane have work on exhibit at the Playhouse.
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LGBTQ Spectrum Film Festival is a community effort
Among the partnering organizations are the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse, Featherstone Center for the Arts, Alex’s Place teen center, the Animal Shelter of Martha’s Vineyard, and the Martha’s Vineyard Library Association. Each of these organizations will participate in the festival in one way or another.
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Vineyard arts groups breaking new ground
MJ Bruder Munafo, artistic and executive director of the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse just off Vineyard Haven’s Main Street, describes the town’s cultural district as “one of the absolute richest in the commonwealth. Rich in the quantity and quality of creative organizations and historical significance.”
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Shakespeare for the Masses: Romeo and Juliet
The shows take place at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse on Saturday, March 30 at 7 p.m. and Sunday, March 31 at 2 p.m.
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When Art Helps Start the Conversation
Mr. Roach is now stepping out as an artist in his own right. In his current one-man show of paintings, though April 4 in the Lobby Art Space of the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse in Vineyard Haven, he explores the world above the waves with still lives, landscapes and human subjects that spark the viewer’s imagination.
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Chris Roberts Tackles White Rabbit Red Rabbit
The show begins at 7 p.m. at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse,
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This Actor Booked Her First Equity Job With Backstage—and You Can, Too!
After relocating from England to Brooklyn, New York, Finty Kelly just booked her first-ever Equity gig: “Passionata” at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse—and she did it through Backstage.
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On Stage With Bernard Madoff, an Innocent’s Perspective
(Jenny) maintains her role as literary manager of the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse, where she also runs the monthly Jenny’s Drama Salon.
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Sean Roach’s paintings tell a contemporary story
It’s appropriate that artist Sean Roach’s first Island exhibit of his work is happening at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse. Not only is Roach a former actor (as well as writer and producer of his own kids’ TV show), his latest series of paintings all feature a narrative with dramatic potential.
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No Script, No Director, No Problem
Martha’s Vineyard will experience three performances of the play, Mr. Barrow said. Following Ms. Hardman Ditchfield’s performance on March 16 at the Performing Arts Center, the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival while host a show on March 23, and the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse host one on March 29.
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Onstage with ‘White Rabbit Red Rabbit’
Scott Barrow has planned for Vineyard audiences on three separate dates, with three different actors, all performing Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour’s “White Rabbit Red Rabbit.” You’ve got three chances to take the ride: Saturday, March 16, at the PAC, Saturday, March 23, at Pathways, co-produced by the M.V. Film Festival, and Friday, March 29, at the M.V. Playhouse; all shows are at 7 pm.
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No March madness
Editorial from The MV Times
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Four poets at the Poetry Cafe
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Poetry Cafe Honors Judith Neeld
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Singer Molly Conole’s calendar is wicked full
Molly Conole is busy. She’s a producer, director, singer, playwright, lyricist, and composer with different shows coming up at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse in February, March, April, and May. In May, Conole will star in her new one-woman-show, “Seaglass, Quilts & Song: Life in Pieces,” which she is pretty much creating soup to nuts, with MJ Bruder Munafo, Playhouse artistic and executive director, taking on the role of director.
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Cleaveland House poets honor one of their own
On Thursday, Feb. 14, the Cleaveland House Poets and the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse will honor Judith Neeld with a celebration of her work at the Playhouse’s monthly Poetry Cafe.
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Wit and wisdom (at Jenny’s Drama Salon)
Jenny’s Drama Salons at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse are a refreshing find in the off-season.
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Shakespeare for the Masses; Where Mayhem and Madness Meet
True to form, Chris Brophy played a sneering, scheming Richard with a spectacularly short fuse during last weekend’s performances by the Shakespeare for the Masses troupe.
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Here comes the Bard
Shakespeare for the Masses brings serious off-season fun to the Playhouse.
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At Home Behind the Lens
Albert O. Fischer has spent nearly all of his life on Martha’s Vineyard, where he was born in 1949. Yet it was his one year away from the Island, when he was drafted into the infantry fighting in the Vietnam War, that set Mr. Fischer on his path to becoming an award-winning photographer of Vineyard scenes.
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Albert O. Fischer Photo Show
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Wicked Good And a Splash of Youth Too
The program notes were clear: Four singers and two pianists were on the bill for 2019’s first Wicked Good Musical Revue at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse. But, as soprano and musical director Molly Conole would soon sing in Gooch’s Song from Mame by Jerry Herman: “You left something out!”
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The Year in Arts on Martha’s Vineyard 2018
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Theater in review: Taking the stage
This past year, as always, local arts organizations provided a fabulous summer of entertainment in all forms. From theater to dance, to comedy and literary talks, Vineyarders had plenty of options.
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Always in season
MJ Bruder Munafo, artistic director of the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse, has a catchphrase she likes to use, “The Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse — where the off season is the on season.”
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A Truly Vineyard Theatrical Tribute
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Theatrical Tribute to Garson Kanin
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In Theatrical Stag’s Leap, Poetry of Pain Leaps Off the Page
Most readers — and there have been many since the book won both the Pulitzer and TS Eliot 2013 prizes for poetry — have come to Stag’s Leap individually, through the printed work. Far fewer people have had the chance to hear the poetry in a theatrical performance of Stag’s Leap that visited the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse on Oct. 26 and Oct. 27.
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When the World Goes Crazy, Art Is Sane Alternative
After a sold-out first reading of her play Dystopian Daze last September at the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse, actress and playwright Brooke Adams went back to work on the black comedy she wrote in response to America’s turn toward authoritarianism.
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Blending theater and poetry in ‘Stag’s Leap’
A theater company from Salt Lake City will bring a unique theater experience to the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse this weekend.
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Delusion by Proxy
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Brooke Adams’ ‘Delusion by Proxy’ hits close to home
The dark comedy, which will be presented as a staged reading by the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse this weekend, is called “Delusion by Proxy” — a reference to a psychiatric syndrome in which delusions are shared by one or more individuals.
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Playhouse set designer exhibits work of a different kind
Pegnato is getting a chance to show another side of her work with an exhibit featuring her paintings in the Art Space in the Playhouse’s lobby.
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Playhouse Set Designer Takes Turn at Center Stage
At the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse, Lisa Pegnato plays a key role that never requires her to step in front of the audience.
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‘The Room Where I Was Held’ takes a page out of today’s newspapers
The tense and chilling drama weaves ideas of family, politics, values, idealism, and life and death together in a story that twists and turns from ominous beginning to shocking conclusion.
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Debut Playwright Is Seasoned Storyteller
The sound of Arabic music is the first hint that this is a different kind of drama. Just how different is revealed gradually, through a series of revelations that add up to a suspenseful evening with a shocking conclusion.
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Edvard Munch Is More Than the Scream, Much More
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‘Dear Edvard’
Munch is coming to the Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse.
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Fred J. Hancock exhibit showcases the shape of shadows
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