Arts

   Brooks Elms, writer, director, and producer of countless films, is coming home to East Hampton this summer. 

   Yes, he plans to see his mother, who still lives in the family house on McGuirk Street, but his real mission is all business. He will be holding a script reading and eventual casting for his new movie, “Montauk Highway.” The film, which takes place in East Hampton, is a teen love story that focuses on tensions and bitterness between locals and the summer crowd.

   Robert Hobbs, author of “Alice Aycock: Sculpture and Projects” published by M.I.T. Press in 2005, will speak on “Alice Aycock: How to Catch and Manufacture Ghosts” tomorrow at 6 p.m. at the Parrish Art Museum. Tickets are $10 and include museum admission.

   The Bridgehampton Museum will open its second of two summer exhibits tomorrow from 5 to 7 p.m. The exhibit, “Next Stop, Seaside Board,” re-enacts the boarding house era from the innkeeper’s perspective. Boarding houses began well before the railroad arrived on the East End and were an important part of Bridgehampton’s history. Julie Greene, the exhibit’s curator, will talk about the era during the opening.

    You know it’s high season when Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater is booked every night, not to mention the galleries that are filled with exhibitions. Looking at the calendar, “Big Bad Wolfe,” a staged reading about the author Tom Wolfe by Rene Auberjonois, will take place tomorrow night. It is covered separately on page C5.  Then, on Saturday at 8 p.m., the Upright Citizens Brigade Touring Company will take over.

   The basilica of Sacred Hearts of Mary and Jesus Church in Southampton will be the setting for a concert by the combined St. Agnes Cathedral Choirs on Saturday at 7 p.m. Under the direction of Michael Bower, the singers are members of St. Agnes’s men and boys choir, the Cathedral Chorale, the Cathedral Schola Cantorum, and the Cathedral Singers. The Diocesan Boys Choir of Rockville Centre will also perform. Allen Pote’s “A Jubiliant Song,” John Rutter’s “For the Beauty of the Earth,” and the “Hallelujah” chorus from Handel’s “Messiah” are on the program.

   Karen Kluglein’s pleasant life fell apart in the year 2000, when her husband, a landscape contractor working with big-name East End architects, died suddenly at the age of 44, leaving her with a 4-year-old daughter, a mile-high stack of medical bills, and a career that had started going south just around the time the child was born.

    Charles Ludlam’s “The Mystery of Irma Vep,” the second production in the Bay Street Theatre’s summer Mainstage season, will open on Tuesday under the direction of Kenneth Elliott. The play was first performed by Mr. Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatrical Company and proved so popular that it ran until April 1986. A two-person comedy, it will star Tom Aulino and David Greenspan, a five-time Obie Award winner.

    More than 100 singers and the members of the South Fork Chamber Orchestra will join together on Saturday to perform George Frideric Handel’s well-known Baroque masterpiece “Israel in Egypt” and Cantata 79 by J.S. Bach. The Choral Society of the Hamptons will team up with the Greenwich Village Singers in the performance. Both groups are directed by Mark Mangini, who will conduct. Suzanne Schwing, mezzo-soprano, and Mischa Bouvier, baritone, are known here from previous concerts with the Choral Society. Sara Paar will be the soprano.

   Nicole Leon, a violinist who is an alumnus of the Perlman music program on Shelter Island, will be on stage at the Clark Arts Center there in a solo recital tomorrow night. The concert starts at 7:30 p.m.

    Ms. Leon, who is from Venezuela, has performed as a soloist and chamber musician worldwide. She is a recipient of a Jerome L. Greene Fellowship and a Dorothy Starling Scholarship at the Juilliard School. Tickets, which are $20 in advance or $25 at the door, with lower prices for those under 18, can be purchased online at the program’s Web site

   On Wednesday, the Southampton Cultural Center will host the Lone Sharks at Cooper’s Beach in Southampton in the first of its 2013 Concerts in the Park series. Each Wednesday until Aug. 28, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. there will be a free concert at either Agawam Park or Cooper’s Beach. Those attending have been advised to take their own seating.

   “Everybody knows we’re going down / When we walk around / Everybody knows we’re going down / When we’re out on the town.”

    With opening lyrics like these, it is quickly apparent that listeners are in for an emotional ride. Welcome to “Everybody Knows,” the eighth and most poignant, sometimes wrenching, album by Taylor Barton, who lives in Amagansett. A mostly acoustic, gentle, and contemplative collection, “Everybody Knows” depicts Ms. Barton’s reaction to, and journey to overcome, a period of great upheaval in her life.

Art Weekend

    ArtWalk Hamptons will sponsor numerous art openings and events this weekend with proceeds at some participating galleries to benefit the Retreat. Certain galleries in East Hampton, Amagansett, Sag Harbor, Montauk, Bridgehampton, and Southampton will be open until 8 p.m. tomorrow and Saturday and until 6 p.m. on Sunday.

    There will be talks, tours, and performances in addition to planned receptions. Complete details are available at artwalkhamptons.com.

Yachts to Look At

   An internationally acclaimed concert violinist, David Podles, will present music by Rachmaninoff, Schubert, Haydn, Vivaldi, and Tchaikovsky at a free concert at the Montauk Library on Saturday. Mr. Podles, a native of Latvia, began playing the violin at 7. As a adult, he has toured across Europe as well as this country, appearing as a soloist with numerous orchestras and performing with numerous symphony, chamber, opera, and ballet groups.

    The concert will take place from 7:30 to 9 p.m.

    Guild Hall will be the home of a literal variety of events beginning tonight with the visiting group Our Fabulous Variety Show presenting “An Eclectic Cabaret,” an evening of burlesque, melodies, comedy, and dances, hosted by the Rev. Ricky Ray and featuring a large ensemble of local talent. Shows will begin at 7:30 tonight and tomorrow. It is a benefit for Your Day Away, which gives parents of children with special needs a day of rest and pampering. Tickets start at $15 and are available on the group’s Web site.

   LongHouse Reserve’s annual container invitational, “Planters: ON+OFF the Ground VI,” in which top landscape designers, artists, and other horticultural professionals compete to see who can create the most striking “container” of plant material, will open to the public on Saturday. Visitors may vote for their favorites for the People’s Choice Award starting at 2 p.m. This year’s judges, all of them well known in the field, are Tovah Martin, Paula Dietz, and Jack deLashmet.    

   There is a lot of black and white in the paintings of Nicolas Carone, particularly in the works he painted in New York City. But in his East Hampton paintings from the 1950s, on view at the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center in Springs, he worked mainly in color.

    He used moody color mixed in with some areas of black and white, but not in the primary way found in his other work. In these paintings, he worked in a limited palette, with a lot of browns, oranges, and ochres mixed with patches of blue, green, and the occasional purple with gashes of red.

   Audra McDonald, the celebrated soprano and actress, will perform at Guild Hall with her jazz ensemble on July 6 at 7 p.m.

    A graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, Ms. McDonald has been touring in support of her new album, “Go Back Home.” Released on May 21 on Nonesuch Records, it is her fifth album for Nonesuch and first in seven years. “Go Back Home,” which debuted at No. 2 on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart, features songs by composers including Stephen Sondheim, Adam Guettel, Michael John LaChiusa, and Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Mannix at Hampton Hang

    In a new show opening tomorrow, Karyn Mannix is looking beyond the beloved South Fork medium of painting to find other artistic inspiration that falls outside that two-dimensional form.

    At Karyn Mannix at Hampton Hang, her summer exhibition space in Water Mill behind Suki Zuki, she has brought together four artists: Maria Bacardi, Charles McGill, Gabriele T. Raacke, and Claire Watson, who use unusual mediums to approach art from a more conceptual viewpoint.

   The Wellness Foundation of East Hampton will be the beneficiary of an event to be held on Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. at a private residence on Dunemere Lane. Joe Cross, the star of the award-winning documentary “Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead,” and founder of Reboot with Joe, will be honored.

    Vegan hors d’oeuvres and wine will be served, and Jane Hastay, Peter Martin Weiss, and John Cataletto will provide live music. Tickets cost $150 and can be ordered through wfeh.org or by calling 329-2590. Tickets will not be sold at the door.

   Local artists will lead workshops from noon to 3 p.m. Saturday at the Watermill Center, as part of the center’s Saturdays @ WMC series, which aims to find new ways for visitors to interact with the art collections, studios, kitchen and more.

    Yoga will be featured, led by Geoffrey Nimmer, as will puppet-making with Andrea Cote. There will be tours of the buildings and grounds, and a presentation by Mary Woltz, the owner and beekeeper at Bee’s Needs.

    More information can be found at watermillcenter.org.

   The dog days of summer — and the game that has long been an East Hampton institution — are not here yet, but an exhibition opening on Saturday at Guild Hall will bring together and celebrate artists, writers, and their work.

    “Millions know their voices, but no one knows their names” is the tagline for “Twenty Feet From Stardom,” a new documentary to be shown as part of the Hamptons International Film Festival’s SummerDocs series on Saturday.

   Hamptons House of Gardens in Southampton will host a comedy night on Saturday from 8 to 10 p.m. featuring Mary Dimino and Meghan Hanley.

    Ms. Dimino is 2010 MAC Award winner for outstanding female comedian from the Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs, and is known for her New York-Italian humor and attitude, according to a release. Ms. Hanley is a comedian, actor, and writer also from New York.

    Tickets cost $30 at the door and $25 in advance through Michelle Simmons at [email protected].   

    Soldier Ride, a homegrown effort to raise money for wounded veterans that took root in conversations at the Stephen Talkhouse nightclub in Amagansett and has grown into an international initiative sponsored by the Wounded Warrior Project, sees its 10th anniversary next summer, and by then, it is hoped, a documentary tracing its extraordinary growth and impact will be ready for its premiere.

   All for the East End, a nonprofit that will raise money for other East End charitable organizations, will host its inaugural concert on Aug. 19 at Martha Clara Vineyards in Riverhead. Nile Rodgers will headline the concert, dubbed the AFTEE Nile Rodgers Dance Party. Joining him will be Avicii, a Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum Swedish D.J.

    In addition to the “Artists & Writers: They Played in the Game” exhibition, Guild Hall will open its summer season with two other new shows: works by John Alexander and Joel Perlman.

    Mr. Alexander is known for his Surrealist paintings of natural phenomena and the human form as well as his biting social commentary. In a solo show opening on Saturday he will present recent natural landscapes.

   The John Jermain Memorial Library is creating a special collection for the music of local artists and is looking for CD donations from musicians to add to its lending catalog of music. Eventually, the library plans to make its collection a searchable online archive available for music streaming.

    Eastern Long Island residents who would like their music included in the collection have been asked to contact Eric Cohen by phone at the library or by e-mail at [email protected].

    Guild Hall’s screening of “The Audience” tomorrow is sold out. The National Theatre Live presentation features Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II in a series of imagined private meetings with prime ministers ranging from Winston Churchill to David Cameron.

    Despite persistent rumors, Ms. Mirren will not be attending the screening, nor was she ever slated to be there.

   D.J. Mister Lama will return to the Parrish Art Museum for its Sounds of Summer series tomorrow at 6 p.m.

    A Sag Harbor resident, Mister Lama describes himself as a “Peruvian redneck from Texas who has been manipulating sound for more than 20 years.” He hosts “Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers” on Stony Brook University’s WUSB 90.1. His set at the Parrish will feature a mix of records from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. Mister Lama hosted radio shows on WRCT, Pittsburgh, and KPFT, Houston, and was a talk show host for Pittsburgh’s Waffle Shop TV.

   Bay Street Theatre’s Comedy Club will feature Kenny Garcia, Vic Henley, Chris Clarke, Mark Riccadonna, and Marina Franklin, all rising stars on Monday, as part of the All Star Comedy Showcase.