The Hamptons International Film Festival’s “25 Years: 25 Films” series will visit the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor on Sunday at 6 p.m. with the 1999 film “Judy Berlin.” Edie Falco, who stars in the title role, will attend the screening and discuss it afterward.

The film, whose director, Eric Mendelsohn, won the directing award at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival, is the story of an aspiring actress whose idealism is at odds with her small suburban community. Madeline Kahn, Barbara Barrie, and Bob Dishy co-star. Tickets are $10.

Bay Street has also announced it is seeking donations of used cars. Because they will be driven locally, they should be in decent condition, but high mileage is not a problem. In exchange, the theater will provide a letter of donation. More information is available by calling the office at 631-725-0818.

Emerging Artists at Malia Mills

“Icebox Tilt,” the final show in the Spring Salon at Malia Mills in East Hampton, will be on view today through Wednesday, with a reception set for tomorrow from 5 to 7 p.m.

The exhibition includes paintings, prints, textiles, sculpture, and video, ranging from the personal and autobiographical to more observational and abstracted explorations. The artists draw inspiration from the improvised and resourceful nature of an icebox “tilt — a meal,” made by tipping the fridge over and using what falls out.

Participating artists are Sara Salaway, Rosie Nalle, Sarah Madden, Morgana Tetherow-Keller, Soren Hope, and Maya Shengold. Five are recent graduates of Bennington College; Ms. Hope graduated from Carleton College in 2015.

Two Solos at Olko

The Monika Olko Gallery in Sag Harbor will open concurrent solo shows of work by Paton Miller and Brett Loving with a reception tomorrow from 6 to 8 p.m. The exhibitions will run through May 9.

Mr. Miller’s work draws on his early influences, his personal life, his travels, and his adventures in a style that amalgamates figuration, abstraction, expressionism, and a hint of art brut. Two of his paintings are on view at the United States Embassy in Havana.

Energy, intuition, and a sense of color inform Mr. Loving’s art. He uses modern machinery and self-designed pieces to create form and light through the manipulation of color. He works on canvas, wood, metal, and linen using skills and tools he has acquired as a designer.

Drawing Room Reopens

Having spent the winter months overseeing its projects at Victoria Munroe Fine Art in Manhattan and being open in East Hampton by appointment only, the Drawing Room is easing its way into the upcoming season with a group show of gallery artists.

The spring installation features work by John Alexander, Jennifer Bartlett, Mary Ellen Bartley, Christopher French, Mel Kendrick, Laurie Lambrecht, Kathryn Lynch, Aya Miyatake, Thomas Nozkowski, Dan Rizzie, and Jack Youngerman. During April the gallery will be open Sundays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and by appointment. 

Grooving at Ashawagh

If it’s April, it must be time for Art Groove to take over Ashawagh Hall in Springs for the weekend. The seventh iteration of the multimedia event will include art, music, and video on Saturday from noon to 11 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

A reception, set for 6 to 11 Saturday night, will include a live performance by #9, a new indie rock group, and a set by the King Bees, an R&B band featuring Frank Latorre. In addition, “Reboot” and “Redressed,” mapped motion graphics videos by John Jinks, will be projected on the outside of the building at dusk.

The exhibition includes work in a variety of mediums by 14 East End artists, including the first showing of paintings by the sculptor Hans Van de Bovenkamp.

The opening of Guild Hall’s 79th Artist Members Exhibition on Saturday afternoon was accompanied by a private reception for the 2017 prizewinners. Joyce Kubat was awarded top honors for her ink-on-paper piece “Armour.” She will have a solo show in the museum’s Spiga Gallery in 2019. Judging this year’s 383 artworks was Ruba Katrib, curator at the SculptureCenter in Long Island City.

Other winners were Pam L. Nolan, best abstract; Anne Drager, best representational work; Neil Kraft, best photograph; Melinda Hackett, best work on paper; Ruby Jackson, best sculpture, and Luk Zulu, best mixed media. Doug Reina won the Catherine and Theo Hios Award for best landscape and Gustavo Bonevardi was named best new artist. Eight-nine new members took part in this year’s exhibition.

Honorable mentions went to Sara M. Kriendler, Alan Lucks, Patti Who, Jeffrey S. Muhs, Ruth Poniarski, Olivia August, Aurelio Torres, and Lawrence & Cornelia Randolph.

The artist-members show is the oldest non-juried exhibition on Long Island and one of the few still offered. It welcomes artists at every level of development. 

Stephanie de Troy Miller, the museum’s assistant curator and registrar, organized this year’s show. Christina Mossaides Strassfield, the director and chief curator, designed the installation.

On a recent Wednesday evening at Wainscott Main Wine and Spirits, more than 30 people crowded around a large, L-shaped table listening to Bryan Tierce, a principal of Oro de Lidia tequila, talk about tequila and mezcal. In front of each participant tiny plastic cups sat on a placemat that identified each libation. Judging from the questions, some were novices, others more experienced, and Mr. Tierce answered with expertise and patience. Cheese, crackers, salsa, guacamole, and chips were abundant.

The shop offers 20 workshops a year, most of them devoted to wine and winemaking. Yesterday, for example, Chimene Macnaughton, the manager of the shop, led an excursion to the Channing Daughters Winery tasting room in Bridgehampton. “The workshops really are for all levels,” she said. “We bring in people who are wine educators, but we make it super-democratic. We want it to be welcoming even if all you know is that you like white wine.” 

In late October 2013, Ms. Macnaughton, after eight years of working in restaurants and as a private chef on the East End, saw in a classified ad that Joel Kaye, the owner of the Wainscott Plaza shopping center, was seeking a manager for the then-vacant shop. He hired Ms. Macnaughton the first week in November, and they opened the shop in January. It was then that her years of experience in restaurants and hospitality came to fruition.

Ms. Macnaughton said that one of the fundamental principles of the shop is to focus on smaller, import-direct companies representing grower-producers, families, and farmers. “We are divesting ourselves of industrially made products by sourcing the smallest production wines we can find in every price point, convinced by extensive comparative tasting that mass-produced wines deliver less deliciousness.” 

While there was no interest in wine in her family, her mother and grandmother were “fearless cooks. No holds barred, no recipes. My mom was one generation removed from gathering the potatoes in the back yard and wringing the neck of the chicken she was going to serve that night. Exposure to that kind of cooking enabled me to become a private chef.”

Ms. Macnaughton was born and raised in Pasadena and attended the University of California Los Angeles, where she majored in history and political science. At the time she thought she would either get a Ph.D. and teach or go to law school. While still an undergraduate, she put herself through college working in high-end, specialty retail. She also took her first job as a waiter.

After graduation she moved to San Francisco, where she worked for a national retailer for several years before being recruited by Coach leatherwear to open her own store. “After that, I thought I’d go to graduate school but wondered how I would support that. I decided to go back to being a server. The restaurant scene in San Francisco in the 1990s was amazing. That’s where I jumped off into that world.”

Waitstaff jobs at high-end restaurants were not easy to come by. She sent out resumes and cover letters to the 40 top restaurants in the city and received two responses, from Postrio and Hawthorne Lane. Postrio had been opened by Wolfgang Puck, and she was interviewed by his brother Claus.

“I bombed that interview and moved through five interviews over four weeks to get my first restaurant job at Hawthorne Lane, where I started out as a lunch server. The wine director there was Richard Coraine, who eventually moved to New York City and built up the wine program of the Union Square Hospitality Group. He was my first connect with the world of wine. It was an amazing education. Two years there felt like a 10-year apprenticeship.”

During her stint at Hawthorne she learned about wine tasting. “That was early in my career and has been with me ever since. It’s something I teach now. For anyone who wants to be a wine professional, tasting in general, but especially blind tasting, is a really great challenge to the senses. It informs how I shop for wine, how I sell wine, and how I talk about wine. At that point I knew enough to think I knew everything.” 

In 2005, after three years as a private chef in Sun Valley, Idaho, she needed a break. “I wanted to go to the beach, I had a boyfriend, and I decided to come to East Hampton. I answered an ad in The Star for a private chef.” That job lasted a month, after which she was unsure what to do next. She decided to stay in East Hampton for the winter.

Then began several years at Della Femina, Fresno, and Rugosa. “There were no management jobs here. I had the résumé to run Della Femina or Nick and Toni’s, but Bonnie Munshin, Walter Struble, Michael Cohen, and Carol Covell had those jobs here. So I was a server, and I happen to love waiting tables.”

At the same time, she took the Sommelier Certification Program, an advanced-level 24-week course run by Andrew Bell. “Sitting in that first class I found out how little I knew. I was so petrified. It was intense, but it rounded out my confidence level and gave me a sense of how big the wine world is and how you can never know it all.”

After Rugosa closed, she went back to Los Angeles for 18 months, until, in 2011, she was contacted by an East Hampton family for whom she had cooked before. At the same time, she met her future husband, Craig Macnaughton, a photographer. “We were long distance, but then he relocated here and we married in the fall of 2011.” They both freelanced, she as a private chef, he as a photographer, until she saw the ad for the position in Wainscott.

“We buy wine from over 50 suppliers. It gives me the opportunity to cherry-pick from everybody to get what I want. One of the biggest things in my job description is that I taste, and I buy, but also at this time of year I am in the city at least once a week at portfolio tastings. I also go to both the Burgundy and Bordeaux previews, where you can taste the vintage.”

“­The bottom line is, I taste all the time. It keeps me aware and gives me a sense of what a vintage is like. It also gives me a sense of whether a trend is happening somewhere regionally, if people are starting to make wines in a different way. Only by the sheer amount of tasting can you see patterns.”

Wednesday Group at Ashawagh

“Welcome Spring,” an exhibition of work by members of the Wednesday Group, will be held at Ashawagh Hall in Springs on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday from 10 to 4. A reception will take place Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m.

The Wednesday Group consists of plein-air painters who set up their easels in the landscape at least one day a week, weather permitting. The show will include work by Anna Franklin, Jean Mahoney, Deb Palmer, Alyce Peifer, Gene Samuelson, Christine Chew Smith, Cynthia Sobel, Frank Sofo, Bob Sullivan, Aurelio Torres, and Dan Weidmann.

Artist-Illustrators at White Room

“Bent,” a show of work by three artist-illustrators, will open at the White Room Gallery in Bridgehampton tomorrow and continue through April 23. A reception with live music by the Benders will take place Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.

An abstract painter known for his tactile works with layers of tar, shellac, and scrap wood, David Geiser is also an illustrator who has created underground comics and worked with such underground cartoonists as S. Clay Wilson. 

Charles Waller is both an illustrator and creator of mixed-media works that often incorporate found objects. He studied illustration at the Royal College of Art in London and has won awards for work in such publications as The New York Times, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated.

Mark S. Fisher, who has been creating artwork for five decades, is a longtime illustrator for The Boston Globe. His work also includes graphic design, comics, found-object assemblage, science fiction artifacts, and fantastic interiors. 

“Eleven Under Thirty” at Ille

Ille Arts in Amagansett will open “Eleven Under Thirty,” a group show featuring young artists, with a reception Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m. The exhibition will remain on view through May 1.

Participating artists are Brianna Ashe, Amanda Brown, Glorimar Garcia, Evan Halter, Claire Hentschker, Adam Jonah, Burleigh Morton, Kevin Pomerleau, Sara Salaway, Morgana Tetherow-Keller, and Ella Wearing. The exhibition will also feature the debut of the interactive art installations of the United Imagination Project.

Two Painters at  Grenning

The Grenning Gallery in Sag Harbor will present an exhibition of paintings by Maryann Lucas and Stephen Bauman from Saturday through May 7, with a reception set for Saturday from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

Ms. Lucas will show a new series of still lifes whose elegant restraint represents a shift in her work to simplified backgrounds and muted tones.

Mr. Bauman’s figurative work includes landscapes and still lifes, but his character portraits first caught the attention of the gallery because “the subjects’ gazes mysteriously extend beyond the plane of the canvas to connect directly with the viewer.”

Mercedes Matter in Manhattan

“Mercedes Matter: A Survey — Paintings and Drawings From 1929 to 1998” is on view at Mark Borghi Fine Art in Manhattan from today through May 3. A reception will be held today from 6 to 8 p.m.

Matter and her husband, Herbert, were integral members of the New York School and counted Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, and Alberto Giacometti among their closest friends. She founded the New York Studio School in 1964. The Matters first came to East Hampton in the 1940s, and she maintained a residence in Springs from 1982 until her death in 2001.

Recent Work by Sue Gussow

Recent work by Sue Ferguson Gussow will be on view from Saturday through April 22 at the Front Art Space in TriBeCa, with a reception set for Saturday from 2 to 7 p.m. The exhibition includes 20 drawings and two paintings.

Unoccupied dresses and spent flowers are Ms. Gussow’s recent themes. Her dress studies attest to her mastery while suggesting the human figure despite the absence of the body. The flower drawings are a meditation on the passage of time.

 Award to Cornelia Foss

Cornelia Foss is one of five artists who will receive Arts and Letters Awards for 2017 from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City. Each artist will receive $10,000 to honor exceptional accomplishment and encourage creative work. Ms. Foss had a retrospective exhibition at Guild Hall in East Hampton in 2015.

Politically Engaged Murals

“La Lucha Continua the Struggle Continues: 1985 and 2017,” an exhibition of more than 150 photographs, artworks, and ephemera, will open Saturday at the Loisaida Center in the East Village with a reception from 3 to 6 p.m. 

Organized by Jane Weissman, a writer and muralist with Artmakers, Inc., the exhibition celebrates 24 politically themed murals painted in 1985 by 29 members of Artmakers and sited in Loisaida’s La Plaza Cultural Community Garden. 

Both Ms. Weissman, the administrator of Artmakers, and Camille Perrottet, its artistic director, live in East Hampton.

Collaborative Coloring

The Art Bus Project, a mobile exhibit founded by Lucia Davis, an artist-in-residence at Guild Hall, will launch a collaborative coloring series with Michelle Muri-Sloane, an artist from Sag Harbor, on Sunday at noon. 

Participants of all ages have been invited to Guild Hall to collectively color one of Ms. Muri-Sloane’s large-scale line drawings. Markers will be supplied, and the resulting artwork will be presented to Guild Hall. The walk-in event is free.

Gabe McKinley’s drama “Extinction” — running now through April 16 at Guild Hall — sits firmly in the “Men Behaving Badly” genre. Fans of Neil LaBute and of David Rabe’s “Hurlyburly” will feel right at home in this tale of two friends who meet in a seedy Atlantic City hotel room with the expectation of reviving their wild past. 

They are, to a certain extent, successful. The proceedings in this hotel room grow increasingly lurid, until by the end the audience has been put through a ringer of decadence and male self-pity. Not to mention a mother lode of cynicism. 

Generally these dramas go something like this: A playwright isolates a group of randy guys (here just two) in order to eavesdrop on what men are “really like” behind closed doors. Drinks are poured, drugs are ingested, women are talked about. The salty dialogue wallows in sexual bravado that may be ugly but nevertheless has a comic zing. Finally the women arrive, throwing the dysfunction into overdrive. By the end there are fisticuffs, ugly confessions, and drunken tears. Bad boys, it seems, are really just lonely inside. 

There’s a good deal of this sort of thing in “Extinction.” Max and Finn are old friends who shared decadent times in Manhattan. Names of their past female conquests roll off their tongues like song titles, and they even have a point-scoring process for their successes: “Single women three points, married women five points.” Max, who hasn’t seen Finn in quite a while, is looking for a similar crazy time at the casino. His mother has just died, and he’s ready to bury the pain of her memory in a wave of drugs, booze, and sex. 

Finn, however, seems reluctant, and it’s soon revealed that he has gotten married and has a baby on the way. He also seems to renounce his past and its excesses, explaining to Max that he has “evolved.” Why he has decided to come to Atlantic City to see Max (especially when Finn purposely didn’t invite his old friend to his wedding) is a bit of a mystery. One explanation might be that Finn is short of funds for graduate school, and he may have intended to ask Max for a loan. We never find out because Max offers first, though he withholds the money as a kind of ransom: Party with me this weekend or else.

As played by Eric Svendsen, Max is a typical young professional on the prowl, ready to devour everything in his path, and Mr. Svendsen finds the wicked charm of the urban wild man. His manic energy is exhausting to watch — for 90-plus minutes he flails, bellows, and bashes around the hotel room, pausing only to light a cigarette or snort a line. There is no doubt this is an actor working his tail off, though one may wonder why the director, Josh Gladstone, didn’t ask for more progression to Max’s mania. 

By the end of the play, as the drug and alcohol intake begins to pile up, Mr. Svendsen has nowhere left on the dial to go; he’s been at 11 from the opening bell. The only place he can go is down, though his crash at the play’s denouement is indeed effective. 

Sawyer Spielberg finds the quiet vulnerability in Finn, though it’s not always easy to believe that Finn is a former ladies’ man gone straight. This may be a fault of the text more than the actor, since Mr. McKinley makes Finn so articulate in his defense of fidelity and his disgust at Max’s misogyny. Complicating things is that Mr. Spielberg’s mild-mannered decency is so convincing it’s hard to locate any residual miles on him from his road to excess. This doesn’t hurt our sympathy for Finn, however, and near the finale, when Max reveals to him a past betrayal, the actor makes the character’s pain feel real.

Brynne Kraynak as Missy and Raye Levine as Victoria bring a desperate humanity to a pair of reluctant prostitutes who visit the men in their hotel suite. These sultry vixens have sad backstories that add a new level of tragedy to an already bleak drama. And if the play’s memorable final scene is dramatically manipulative, but also genuinely disturbing, it is in good part due to these two actresses.

But my oh my, what a work of pessimism this is. In the drama’s early stages we hear Max deliver his philosophy of extinction, which I paraphrase here: Men must fight and screw in order for the continuation of the species, thus men are hot-wired for bad behavior. “Extinction” ultimately rejects this notion, but its worldview may be even more cynical. By the end it strips nearly everything from its characters; every illusion is burned to the ground. 

The real extinction in this drama is the author’s faith in humanity.

Engage with it at your peril.

Fifty years ago, Ron Jones, a young teacher in Palo Alto, Calif., devised an unusual project as an experiment for students in his sophomore high school history class. While it was mentioned only in the student newspaper at the time, it has since become the subject of a short story, a TV movie, a novelization, and a German feature film screened at Sundance, a musical, a documentary, and a full-length play.

Its most recent iteration is “The Wave,” a one-person show, which will be presented at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor tonight at 7, Friday at 8, and Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m. Jon Kovach stars, Aaron Rossini directs, and Mr. Jones will participate in question-and-answer sessions after each performance.

Mr. Jones’s intention was to convey to his students how ordinary Germans were able to accept the actions of the Nazis. Over the course of five days, he conducted a series of classroom exercises that emphasized discipline and community.

At first, Mr. Jones morphed into an authoritarian figure who established rules for the students. On the second day, he named the movement “The Third Wave,” developed a Hitler-like salute, and ordered students to salute each other out of class. Participants received membership cards and were encouraged to recruit new members. By the end of the third day, there were more than 200 members, some of whom reported others when they failed to abide by the rules. By the fourth day, Mr. Jones realized the experiment was slipping out of his control.

Only on the fifth day did he reveal the truth: The entire enterprise had been a deception, one that resulted in the students’ developing a sense of superiority, as German citizens reportedly had done.

Mr. Kovach, who is based in Jersey City, N.J., is a writer, director, puppeteer, and musician in addition to an actor. He discovered the story when he came upon the German film “Die Welle (The Wave)” while browsing on Netflix. “I was just absolutely taken with it,” he said recently, “so I had to look up everything I could on it.” 

While watching a video of Mr. Jones telling the story, Mr. Kovach said he thought it could make an excellent one-person play. “I reached out to Ron, pitched the idea, and showed him some of my previous work. . . .  He loved it and decided to give me a chance to create a script from the story.”

Mr. Kovach drew from a story Mr. Jones had written in 1976, which spawned the other versions, and some poetry Mr. Jones had written while teaching the class in 1967. “This is the only time his poetry has seen the light of day. Ron also touched on the project in ‘Airman,’ a novel he self-published. He let me use all those writings to create the story we have now.” 

“The Wave” has evolved since Mr. Kovach first developed it. The original version included film footage from the Nazi era, but the 50-minute Bay Street performance will include only some images from World War II. 

“Ron did write a full-cast production of this; he also wrote a musical. Since mine is a solo performance, there are moments when the audience finds itself in the role of the students. One of the reasons I find the story so fascinating is that so many people want to keep telling it in different ways. It has been performed in various versions worldwide.”

 “I enjoy all aspects of storytelling, but acting is my main source of artistic satisfaction. What makes our play unique is that it involves some of Ron’s writings that haven’t been seen elsewhere, and ours is the only one-person version of it.”

Tickets are priced from $20 to $45.

A program of country music performed by Tennessee Walt will take place at the East Hampton Library on Saturday afternoon from 1 to 3. The occasion for the performance is the 90th anniversary of the Bristol Sessions in Bristol, Tenn., during which a producer for the Victor Talking Machine Company, the early record label, recorded blues, ragtime, gospel, ballads, topical songs, and string bands.

Also known as Gayden Wren, Tennessee Walt will discuss the sessions, which Johnny Cash called “the single most important event in the history of country music,” and perform songs by Jimmie Rodgers, the Carter family, Hank Williams, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, and Mr. Cash. Reservations can be made at the library’s reference desk or at eventbrite.com.

Katherine Addleman, a classical pianist, will perform a concert of works by Franz Schubert at the Montauk Library on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. Schubert, who died in 1828 at the age of 31, bridged the gap between music’s classical and romantic periods. Known as an extremely prolific composer, he produced symphonies, chamber music, piano works, and art songs, many of which are regarded as masterpieces.

Ms. Addleman performs frequently in the United States and Canada. She is well known for her lively discussions about her subjects as well as for her performances.

Although Mario Cuomo famously said, “Campaign in poetry, govern in prose,” the reverse is more often true, especially in times of political upheaval, when stark divisions are exposed and disquieting questions about a nation’s character are raised. Throughout history, calamitous times often have us seeking solace — and wisdom — in verse.

In 2015, the United States Department of Arts and Culture, a nongovernmental organization, initiated an annual civic ritual and participatory art project called the People’s State of the Union, further solidifying the link between politics and poetry. Each January, following the State of the Union address, hundreds of communities nationwide gather in living rooms, libraries, and churches to create story circles, in which they share thoughts and reflections on the state of the nation. 

In January, the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill hosted a closed-door story circle for 50 artists, poets, designers, writers, educators, activists, and students on the East End.

A continuation of the dialogue will take place at the museum tomorrow (April is National Poetry Month) with Poetry Night: the People’s State of the Union. Ten poets, including some who were at the January circle and others who read transcripts from that evening, will read their work based on reactions to the stories. The event is open to the public.

Corinne Erni, curator of special projects at the Parrish, announced the lineup of poets: Tyler Armstrong, Star Black, Max Blagg, Megan Chaskey, Scott Chaskey, Sandra Dunn, R.J.T. Haynes, Joe Lamport, Kathryn Levy, and Tyler Allen Penny.

Ms. Levy, twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her poetry collections, said she had welcomed the opportunity to participate in the earlier story circle, which took place a week after the president’s inauguration. “It was a very dark time for me,” she said, “and I found it just glorious to be around people who were willing to share very personal reflections on the times. I was lifted by the experience.” Afterward, she spent a week in residency at a writers’ colony, composing verse that reflected the stories she heard that night, some of which she will read tomorrow.

For the British visual artist, poet, and environmentalist R.J.T. Haynes, “Poetry is like painting with words, and it has a strong visual element for me.” Mr. Haynes, who divides his time among Cornwall, in southwest England, Manhattan, and East Hampton, said his verse will explore the characteristics of America, which he believes are now under threat, notably the notion that anyone can succeed here regardless of background, race, or religion. “It is the most precious elements of America that now seem so precarious,” he said.

Joe Lamport, poet, novelist, and translator, was at January’s story circle, and it had a surprising effect on him. “I’m usually not a joiner or a participator, but I found myself extremely moved by the sense of people coming together during a time of extreme stress,” said Mr. Lamport. His work to be read tomorrow falls into two categories. “The first,” he explained, “describes my overall experience” on that evening; the second is a more personal interpretation — “my own voice.”

Tyler Allen Penny considers it a great privilege to be seen as a collective voice for the people. “I’m taking elements from story circle and amping them up to 11,” said Mr. Penny, who teaches poetry at Stony Brook University. He promises a 10-minute “performance poetry” at the Parrish, calling it “a collective yap in the void.”

Spoken-word poets and performers grappling with disquieting times seems to be the underlying theme for tomorrow’s Poetry Night. Is it poetry’s role to fan the flames or cool tempers?

The story circle will begin at 6 p.m. Admission is $12, free for museum members, children, and students. Reservations have been recommended.