One of the many surprises in “Wig Shop,” Kat Coiro’s compelling 15-minute contribution to the Hamptons International Film Festival’s program of shorts by female filmmakers, was Emily Mortimer’s performance as an Orthodox Jewish woman. The actress, who plays a world-traveling, hard-driving producer in the HBO series “The Network,” is absolutely convincing as a timid, anxious wife who reluctantly arrives in her white Lexus at a wig shop in a black neighborhood in south-central Los Angeles. Ms. Mortimer and her husband, the actor Alessandro Nivola, both of whom have strong family connections to the East End, are among the film’s co-producers. 

Ms. Coiro was one of six female directors and producers who shared the tight stage at Rowdy Hall for Sunday’s Winick Talk, “Women in Film: Lots of Talk, Any Action?” Moderated by Thelma Adams, a novelist and New York film critic, the panel considered the difficulties faced by women in the film industry and the efforts underway to create more opportunities in every area of the business.

Anne Hubbell, a producer, summed up the panel’s consensus early on. “When we change who’s telling the stories, we change the stories that are getting told.” Ms. Hubbell has put that tenet into action as co-founder of Tangerine Entertainment, the first production company focused on media by women directors.

Ms. Adams asked each of the filmmakers to talk about how they managed to surmount the challenges faced by women in the industry. Chris Hegedus, whose career as a documentary filmmaker spans 40 years, recalled that when she was thinking of a career in the 1960s she had never heard of women directing films. “I didn’t think of it as a career until I saw some experimental films by Shirley Clarke and Maya Deren.” While putting on a film festival, she realized that women were working on many of the early cinema verité documentaries, and a long career followed. 

Other panelists with films in the festival were Jessie Auritt, the director of “Supergirl,” and Kahane Cooperman, who directed “Joe’s Violin.” Alexis Alexanian, a producer who was a partner of the late Gary Winick, a director/producer and a longtime supporter of the festival, rounded out the panel.

Each speaker followed a distinctive career path. Ms. Coiro started out as an actress. “I started making shorts and starring in shorts, because I was the only actor who would trust me.” Most of the women did not attend film school. “Making ‘Supergirl’ was my film school,” said Ms. Auritt, who also learned her craft directing, producing, and shooting web video. 

Ms. Kahane’s first effort was shot with a borrowed camera, cost $50, and won a $75 prize. “I got the buzz from that, and I went to Columbia’s graduate program in screenwriting and directing.” While that program focused on narrative film, “I went against the tide and made a short 16mm film that, while it was puzzling to the school, premiered at Sundance.”

The discussion segued into a consideration of obstacles and how to overcome them, despite the fact that, as Ms. Hubbell pointed out, “The numbers haven’t changed much in the past 40 years . . . there’s a need for a more systematic approach. We need women in the writers’ rooms, we need women who are partners in big entertainment law firms, we need female partners in the major talent agencies.”

The field of advertising is one of the worst, according to Ms. Coiro, who noted that only 3 percent of directors in that field are women. Ms. Hubbell added that reviewers are 80 percent male and therefore “dominate what we get to read. We don’t have enough female voices in criticism, and that very much influences things.”

Although there is a large audience for women’s films, that doesn’t translate into a similar proliferation of them, Ms. Adams observed. Ms. Hubbell added, “At one point this year 20 percent of the top 10 moneymaking films were directed by women, but only 4 percent of all films released had female directors.”

Other opportunities, in addition to Tangerine, include the 51 Fund, a partnership between an actress-writer and a Wall Street woman that aims to finance more films by women, and Fork Films, which supports many films by women and stories about women.

In addition to all the statistics that dramatize the need for opportunities, the program of short films cited above, “New York Women in Film and Television: Women Calling the Shots,” makes it clear that the talent and imagination of female filmmakers is abundant. It’s the industry that needs to provide outlets for them.

The conversation at the East Hampton Middle School between the actor Edward Norton, the recipient of the 2016 Hamptons International Film Festival’s Career Achievement Award, and David Edelstein, the chief film critic for New York magazine, began auspiciously. Mr. Edelstein, referring to Mr. Norton’s inspiration for Mike Shiner, his self-involved character in the Academy Award-winning “Birdman,” asked, “Where do you go to find the ultimate narcissistic actor?”

Mr. Norton’s deadpan reply: “There are more of these in the profession than you might think.” After the laughter subsided, he went on to discuss the film. “I can’t give enough credit to Alejandro Inarritu and his writing partners. So much of what was in that film was actually fully realized and articulated in the script. That character was so well defined and so fully realized that it was a real gift.”

The actor’s sharp intelligence, insight into the profession, and sense of humor were fully on display Sunday throughout the festival’s A Conversation With c program. Mr. Edelstein mentioned performers who “shape the room so it all circles around them,” to which the actor replied, “Yeah, alcohol has a lot to do with it, too, in many cases.”

Turning serious, Mr. Norton said, “I’ve always felt there are some actors who are iconically larger than life and there are some who are more subtle shape-shifters, who are hiding or not even using their own essence in the work. I’ve always been riveted by the ones who are naturally iconic.” Though reluctant to situate himself between the two poles, he cited Harrison Ford, Morgan Freeman, Tom Hanks, James Stewart, and Cary Grant as actors with “a certain gravitational center.”

“It’s impossible to imitate Cary Grant,” he said. “Who’s more iconic than Cary Grant? He was also a great actor, but you don’t see him transforming himself in a chameleonic way. I mean, I don’t think he had a different haircut in a single film in his career.” He went on to mention Daniel Day Lewis as an actor at the opposite end of the spectrum, “the type of actor who disappears into every role.”

Any extended conversation about acting will ultimately lead to Marlon Brando. Mr. Norton worked with Brando and Robert de Niro on the heist film “The Score” in 2001. “I’m not sure I’d have done that particular film absent those two guys being in it,” he said. “You do that just for the experience — and to own the poster later with your name next to theirs.” 

Mr. Norton knew Brando before making that film. “He was really an incredibly poetic and funny guy, sad and tormented in a lot of ways, but he had a very nimble mind. I loved watching the way he went about trying to keep it fresh for himself.”

When the conversation turned to Method acting, Mr. Norton noted that it had been somewhat inaccurately ascribed to Lee Strasburg’s notion of the value of memory, both “sense” and “emotional.” “To me, that’s a completely fascinating and compelling and useful thing in the context of the classroom and in developing yourself as an actor. But when you’re doing the actual work with someone who is not using the circumstances of the text as their access point but is instead using their own shit, it’s like acting with someone who is looking in a mirror.”

In stark contrast, he said, one of his favorite acting teachers said that style was everything. “If you think Noel Coward and Shakespeare and John Osborne and David Mamet can all be addressed without understanding their style — if you think you can access a memory of your mom to help you with those — you’re in real trouble. If you can’t dial yourself into the frequency of an artist who’s got a very definitive style, you can be lost and paralyzed.”

The actor stressed the importance of empathy as an alternative to self-exposure. “I think deep, studied empathy for the imagined emotional condition of the character is important. Really good actors are as good or better when they’re listening as when they’re speaking. You can map the play of their thought without their saying anything.” 

He cited Stella Adler’s belief that imagination is the key, “because if you can imagine yourself and take yourself with empathy into another person’s circumstance or an imaginary circumstance, there’s just so much depth to be found.”

The film clips shown at the beginning of the program bolstered Mr. Norton’s contention and confirmed his chameleon-like qualities. From the altar boy accused of murdering an archbishop in “Primal Fear,” his first feature, to the neo-Nazi in “American History X,” to the priest in “Keeping the Faith,” a comedy he also directed, to “The Incredible Hulk” and “Flight Club,” there is never a lapse in authenticity. He man ages to keep the viewer mesmerized, even as he disappears into his characters.

He discussed the difficulty of maintaining concentration on a movie set, where 90 percent of the time is spent waiting for the “technical preparation of the artifice.” He cited Milos Forman as “one of the greatest directors of all time. “He once told me that all he did was roll the cameras, waiting for that unrepeatable moment. I can’t think of a single great director I’ve worked with who isn’t always waiting for those nuggets of accidental, unrepeatable magic.”

The conversation concluded with an inquiry from Mr. Edelstein about Crowdrise, a crowdfunding platform created by the actor and his partners to enable organizations and individuals to raise charitable donations.

Approaches to Landscape

“Land/Sea,” an exhibition of work by John Todaro, Phyllis Chillingworth, and Annie Sessler and Jim Goldberg, will be on view at Ashawagh Hall in Springs on Saturday and Sunday, with a reception set for Saturday from 5 to 8 p.m.

Mr. Todaro will exhibit recent color and black-and-white photographs of the South Fork landscape. The natural world figures in the paintings of Ms. Chillingworth, who translates the energy of land, water, and sky into oil paint and watercolors.

For Ms. Sessler and Mr. Goldberg, who are married and live in Montauk, fishing and making art are intertwined. They practice the Japanese craft tradition of Gyotaku, making relief prints on fabrics using inks and freshly caught fish. 

Negroponte in New York

“Gravel Road,” a solo exhibition by the Springs artist George Negroponte, is on view at the Anita Rogers Gallery in SoHo through Nov. 30. Mr. Negroponte’s recent work uses pre-mixed hardware store paint and pieces of discarded cardboard that are stacked, superimposed — “just like laying bricks right on top of each other,” according to the artist — and affixed to the wall with pushpins. 

Writing about their blunt physicality, Mr. Negroponte sees them as “artifacts, set apart, self-sufficient, and speaking on their own terms . . . rooted in the real, the non-manipulated, and the not-over-parented.”

Since 1980, Mr. Negroponte has had 18 solo shows at galleries in New York City and abroad. His work has been included in numerous museum shows, among them the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Ned Smyth Sculpture

“Ned Smyth: Moments of Water,” an exhibition of large sculptures, photographs, and smaller installations, will open on Sunday at Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, N.J., where it will be on view through April 2.

Mr. Smyth, a pioneer in public art who lives and works on Shelter Island, developed a fascination with stones when young. For many years, his large architectural constructions and installations were influenced by classical architecture, but more recently he discovered a cache of stones he had collected for 35 years and began creating and photographing massive sculptures inspired by them.

The exhibition includes eight of the sculptures and a selection of large-format black-and-white photographs that express his obsession with definition, texture, and scale.

Messinger at Javits

John Messinger, a former Ross School instructor and Watermill Center resident artist who now lives in California, will have his work on view at the PhotoPlus Expo this weekend at the Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. Fuji Film has commissioned three original works from the artist, which the company will present along with a brief video describing his practice and process. 

The fair is open today through Saturday. Mr. Messinger will be a featured speaker on the fair’s main stage today at 11 a.m. and tomorrow at 4:15 p.m.

The three-person show at Amagansett’s Ille Arts Gallery has a unifying theme in landscape painting, but the path each artist follows in addressing it diverges wildly. What is fascinating, though, is how each section of the show manages to have something to say to the others. It becomes a show that is by turns literal, figurative, abstract, and highly individualized.

The artists involved are Kamilla Talbot, Barbara Thomas, and Matthew Vega. Each works in oil, but achieves different tones, finishes, compositions, and densities in that medium.

Ms. Talbot chooses a high-keyed palette, but the finish is flat — not quite matte, but no sheen in sight. This is the right choice for the deep pinks, electric blues and greens, and showy yellows in her abstracted compositions of Expressionistic color.

Her intention is to examine various water bodies in relation to their edge, be it delineated by land or the bounds of a man-made vessel. It’s the point where earth or wood or fiberglass gives way to shimmery depth, movement, reflection, and transparency. It might be a Catskill pond or a shoreline, but her water bodies absorb and give back all the light and color of the surrounding landscape as well as the sky. They are both dreamy and honest depictions of a very personal apprehension of nature.

Her saturated colors come close to veering off into garishness, but never quite get there, and there is something exhilarating about her graceful dance to keep it all in check. One more brushstroke and each canvas could veer past the point of poetry and into the realm of mawkishness.

In Ms. Thomas’s series “The Day,” we have 24 paintings, all oil on board, which take us from dawn to dusk and beyond. The exhibition encompasses the 16-by-24-inch paintings as well as postcard-size studies on paper, along with a video of these compositions that allows them some movement to imply time’s passage.

It is a sumptuous installation. Even though the pieces ultimately will be broken up through their individual sale, the whole is indeed greater than its parts. 

Rather than keep the enterprise a purely literal examination, Ms. Thomas reaches for the poetic in her titles, evoking mystery and the connection of nature to our subconscious, and even a bit of heaven. “Great Is the Sun and Wide He Goes,” “All Is Blue and Strange,” “Wet Dawn Inks Doing Their Blue Mirage,” and “I Have Been One Acquainted With the Light” are a few examples.

The colors, too, are just past the realm of nature’s palette. She has chosen to heighten them with a touch of florescence, lending a sense of the surreal. It is most evident in her grass, which, amazingly, appears both generalized and specific. A wide, low swath of green is cut into with tiny lines to create individual blades. Her clouds are both dense and cottony and thin and gauzy, sometimes in the same composition. Her sunset subjects might be pale offerings or deeply hued extravaganzas of reds, purples, oranges, and yellows. Suddenly all is dark, but then the sky reignites with the rising of the moon, only to be diminished by the gathering clouds. 

Artists have been coming up with ways to mark the passage of time and its implications for our mortality for centuries, with classic traditions such as vanitas or memento mori paintings. Rather than a grand, sweeping gesture, Ms. Thomas gives us a tiny morsel, one that evokes such themes but allows us the chance to dismiss them on such a fine “day.”

Mr. Vega’s work, on the other hand, does something else entirely. His approach takes the conceptual nature of the other artists a step or two beyond. His paintings are memories not of actual landscapes he has seen, but his recollection of landscape paintings. This approach, completely removed from reality, casts him as interpreter of the interpreted. He said it was an attempt to tap into a perhaps universal memory or collective unconscious of art history. Only one of this series is included in the show, and it is in the gallery office. The rest of the exhibition is his "Dimorphism" series.

In these, the artist said he is dealing with "forms, organisms perhaps, which are related yet different, and the possibility of how those forms interact with one another as a result of, or in fact because of, those differences." Not wholly abstract, the paintings could even refer to simple cellular organisms. From the bivalent objects depicted to the dual nature of his presentation, he leaves us with much to ponder.

The exhibition remains on view through Monday.

An earlier version of this review unintentionally blended and examined Mr. Vega's two series together. The "Dimorphism" series and the "Memory Landscape" series are two distinct bodies of work.

An examination of the work of Connie Fox and William King will lead a slate of new exhibitions opening at Guild Hall on Sunday with a special reception from 3 to 5 p.m. Serving as guest curator for “Connie Fox and William King: An Artist Couple” is Gail Levin, a professor of art history at the City University of New York, author of many books and monographs on artists, and a contributor to The East Hampton Star. She is also the author of the exhibition catalog essay and will interview Ms. Fox preceding the reception at 2 p.m.

Also opening on Sunday will be “Michael Knigin: The Holocaust and Anne Frank” and a selection of works by William S. Heppenheimer, the 2014 winner of top honors at the Guild Hall members show.

As the title of the Fox and King show suggests, this presentation will focus on the artists as a long-time couple and how their relationship influenced and nurtured their work. In addition, the influence of place will be an important theme, with works inspired by their visits to Sammy’s Beach and friends from the neighborhood such as Cindy Sherman. 

On view will be paintings and drawings by Ms. Fox and sculptures, chairs, and works on paper by Mr. King, who died last year. Dr. Levin called the show “an intimate look at artworks that reflect the relationship of an artist couple that were integral to this community.” Parallels are made between other notable artistic couples such as Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, Elaine and Willem de Kooning, and James Brooks and Charlotte Park, while the exhibition will include Mr. King’s portraits of contemporary artist couples such as John Hardy and Joan Semmel and Eric Fischl and April Gornik.

The couple met more than three decades ago when each came to play fiddle in Audrey Flack’s band, the Art Attacks. By that time, each had been married previously and were mature artists. They worked alone in separate studios but shared their ideas and interests. Both admired Marcel Duchamp and incorporated homages to the Dadaist in their work both in traditional mediums and performative ways, such as cross-dressing for costume parties.

Mr. Knigin had a long and eclectic artistic career before his death from lung cancer in 2011. One element  was a series of works inspired by the Holocaust and one of its most famous victims, Anne Frank. His interest was sparked during a 1974 trip to Israel where he established a lithographic and silkscreen studio for the Jerusalem Foundation. After meeting several survivors there, he began sketching them. In addition he began examining the Holocaust archives at the Israel Museum, where he became engaged with the story of Anne Frank. The exhibition contains some of the 150 works that Mr. Knigin completed in that series. It was organized by Joan Kraisky, his wife and an artist herself.

Mr. Heppenheimer’s work was given top honors by Robert Storr, who is dean of the Yale School of Art. This is his first solo museum exhibition. His work has been influenced by Op Art, Victor Vasarely, and Bridget Riley, and his mature style features acrylic paintings on boards that often have been shaped or carved in a sculptural way. His show was organized by Stephanie de Troy Miller.

These exhibitions will remain on view through the end of the year.

Joe Dolce is not a stoner. The author of “Brave New Weed: Adventures Into the Uncharted World of Cannabis,” he makes a point of that, but also has no hesitance in “piercing the veil” and talking from a user’s as well as a researcher’s point of view about pot.

The former editor in chief of Details and Star magazines, and a writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Travel + Leisure, and other publications, Mr. Dolce, who lives in Amagansett and New York City, operates Joe Dolce Communications, a presentation and media-training company. 

He had no plans to spend years traveling the globe to meet key players in the world of pot, from the Cannabis Cup competition in Amsterdam and laboratories in Israel where researchers examine the extraordinary properties of the plant, to grow sites in California and the offices of new pot entrepreneurs in Colorado. 

But, as he describes in the book, one day his cousin told him about a new hobby: growing pot. “He introduced me to a strain called Super Lemon Haze — which was like my mind on jazz,” Mr. Dolce said in a recent interview. “It was a delight — stimulating, thoughts ticking through the brain.” 

He had just had a birthday, a longtime relationship had ended, and he felt due for a shift. 

“I went and started looking,” the author said. He discovered that information about cannabis — the target, he said, of a political and propaganda war in this country since the 1930s, which has obscured the reality about the use and benefits of the plant — stemmed only from widely disparate sources. The conversation about pot was marooned between two varying points of view represented by “the U.S. government and High Times” on either side.

“There was no one speaking to me about weed.” And, the author said, what information was generally available was skewed to either side as well.

He resolved to look at the topic “across science, the culture, the economy. I wanted to paint a real picture: What are people doing, what are the facts behind it, and what are the effects on society at large?”

“The new world of weed is about so much more than getting high. It’s about science, the chemistry of emotions, politics, criminal justice, entrepreneurship, and, of course, a lot of money.”

“My whole job was trying to parse the fiction from the fact,” Mr. Dolce said. “I went for the highest authorities — some of them who used the plant, some of them who never even smelled it.” 

“The journey itself was fun,” he said. “I tried to write it as a mystery, in a way, that I was solving as I went.” 

Getting the right tone, sounding “both cool enough and respectable,” was the key. With both well-researched passages that provide the reader with fascinating cannabis facts, and the author’s anecdotes about how he navigated the world of pot production and smoking, he seems to have hit the mark.

Every step of the way, from details of the U.S. disinformation campaign about the “evil” weed (remember “Reefer Madness”?) to the known and only suspected properties of cannabis, or an inside look at the cannabis biz, the process was surprising, Mr. Dolce said. 

On his website, BraveNewWeed.com, he writes that he “was nervous at first about telling people” what he was doing.

“I started smoking when I was a teenager, and used it all the way through college,” Mr. Dolce said in the interview. But at a certain point in life, “I had sort of lost the reason I had used the weed.” And, he said, pot itself had changed from back in the day into a much stronger product that could more easily evoke unwanted experiences.

When he started researching cannabis and told people about his project, “I got a very consistent response,” Mr. Dolce said. “Either, can you get me some, tell me more, or, my cousin has this or that disease — would it work? My lawyer, my broker, accountants, my colleagues in the media all wanted to know more, or said, ‘I’ve been smoking for years.’ ” He likened the finally honest conversations about pot to the process of coming out as a gay man — what happens when a discussion leads to deeper understanding and broad generalization becomes impossible, when someone becomes “less other,” he said. “I thought, ‘I’m coming out again; here we go again.’ ”

In Amsterdam, “I had a very bad time,” he said. “Too many white guys in dreads, and too many people in tie-dye. I wasn’t finding a group of people who were me.”

Then he went to visit a Denver resident who was “cutting-edge at the time in making oils and concentrate.” It was his experience there after trying a “dab” — a tiny, potent concentration of THC and cannabinoids — when he vomited violently after inhaling, that led him to deeper investigations of how pot works on the body.

“I went to Israel to really learn the chemistry and biochemistry,” interviewing pre-eminent researchers there, Mr. Dolce said. Despite recent legalization for medical as well as recreational use in some states, restrictive laws in this country that place marijuana in the category of “highly addictive” drugs with “no medical benefit” constrain scientific study of cannabis here.

“I felt it was very important to learn that complicated science and write it for my peers.” He learned, for instance, about how properties in cannabis interact with receptors in the human brain and body, and was left with a strong belief in the beneficial properties of the weed. 

Not only can it relieve suffering from a host of diseases, but it can be “a wellness product,” Mr. Dolce said. “Let’s reframe this plant,” he said. “Let’s think of it as something that may actually be good for you. Let’s look at all the properties.” 

“All of my research showed me how effective this could be. I don’t believe in miracles. And I also believe in allopathic [traditional Western] medicine — I think it works.” Nonetheless, for insomnia, pain, or other, more serious diseases, “I would use cannabis.”

In fact, for a touch of arthritis, he obtains transdermal patches that deliver a cannabis dose — not something that’s legally obtainable in New York for that use.

“I think it’s outrageous that I have to smuggle an analgesic made from a plant from one state to another,” Mr. Dolce said. Soon, though, he expects laws and policies to change as we reach “a tipping point,” with increased legalization of cannabis use. Medical and even recreational use of marijuana is legal now in several states, and Canada is not far behind.

“In a way, cannabis has been a very large clinical trial for 10,000 years. The ancients really understood this plant,” and science today is proving some of their beliefs and theories.

“Can we use it mindfully, can we use it for retreat, can we use it for deeper connection, to heighten the senses? I see it as another portal to approach life.”

On a bike ride around his Amagansett neighborhood after taking a toke, “I smell the pine trees more vividly, I feel the wind differently,” he said. “It’s an enhanced state; it’s really wonderful. And then when I stop to eat afterwards, I taste the food wonderfully.” 

“That to me is a great simple pleasure of life. It’s just completely pleasant. And why not?” 

“It’s about more than getting high. It can be as complicated as the neurotransmitter system of the body, or it can be as simple as smelling the pine trees.” 

Heading back to the East End after a cross-country book tour, Mr. Dolce will be at BookHampton in East Hampton on Saturday at 5 p.m. 

“I want people to come ask questions,” he said. “Let’s talk about this.”

“Unlocking the Cage,” which won this year’s Zelda Penzel Giving Voice to the Voiceless award at the Hamptons International Film Festival, is a film about a lawyer’s quest to give certain human rights to animals.

Chris Hegedus and D.A. Pennebaker, award-winning filmmakers who have a house in Sag Harbor, directed the film and received the award before its screening on Sunday afternoon. They spoke about the evolution of their awareness of animal rights issues in a panel discussion after the screening.

“My daughter told us we had to bring a dog back from California . . . and she was right. Our lives changed enormously,” Mr. Pennebaker said about his devotion to animals. “He has since died, but he’s in my mind every day.”

Ms. Hegedus said their awareness of animal rights issues was part of a longer process that culminated in meeting Steven Wise, the subject of their film, who was also in attendance on Sunday. “Meeting Steve changed the way we live, the way we eat, and the way we think about other animals,” she said. Jane Goodall was another important inspiration.

“I grew up with cats and dogs that I loved terribly, but it wasn’t until I read Peter Singer’s book [‘Animal Liberation’] in 1980 that I realized there was a problem,” said Mr. Wise. Almost immediately he began to take what he calls “non-human animals” as clients.

The film documents his attempts to have courts begin to examine “the personhood of non-human animals, suing on behalf of chimpanzees so that they might live with more autonomy while still being in captivity.

To make his case, he needed evidence of both the emotional and intellectual life of the animals he was representing. He also needed to find some in captivity whose circumstances would not simply be an issue of animal welfare, but illustrative of the kind of incarceration that impinged on their autonomy, in a way similar to human prisoners. 

The tactic he developed was to sue for a writ of habeas corpus for the chimps, arguing that these rights, in a narrow interpretation, could apply to them. Such rights would allow a court or jury to determine whether their captivity qualified as an unjust incarceration. In order for such rights to apply, the courts had to consider whether his clients were eligible for personhood the way corporations and other entities have been deemed in light of recent legal rulings.

Mr. Wise chose a few chimpanzees living in different circumstances in New York State, including two being used for research at Stony Brook University. Two of the more elderly chimps died before their cases could get to court. The remaining two, Hercules and Leo from Stony Brook, became the focus of his case. He ended up in the Court of Appeals, New York State’s highest court, but fell short of getting his argument accepted.

He kept trying, eventually convincing a lower court judge that there was merit in the argument, but even her ruling fell short of his ultimate goal. It turns out that personhood, as a legal concept, not only comes with rights, but also responsibilities, ones that would be hard to apply to animals, even those high on the evolutionary chain.

Still, Mr. Wise has shown marked progress in reframing this debate. As his cases have progressed over the years, popular sentiment has also moved more toward his view of animals. Recent research findings and increasing scientific evidence of animal intelligence and emotional maturity in creatures such as primates and dolphins will support his arguments and could make his cases more successful in the future.

“I did think it was going to get this far,” Mr. Wise said in response to a question from the audience. “And it’s going to get a lot farther.”

With impeccable timing, the Hampton Theatre Company in Quogue will open its 2016-2017 season with “November,” David Mamet’s scathing satire on American presidential politics, next Thursday evening at 7. The play will run through Nov. 6.

As relevant today as when it premiered on Broadway in 2008, “November” visits the first-term president Charles Smith during the week before Election Day. With approval ratings near zero and without the support of his re-election committee, he is running out of money and his wife is preparing to leave him. Grim as things appear, President Smith hopes the traditional presidential pardon of the Thanksgiving turkey can save his candidacy.

The play features Mr. Mamet’s trademark politically incorrect, profanity-laden style in its characterization of the egomania, moral elasticity, and hunger for power that drive electoral politics. 

Show times are Thursdays and Fridays at 7 p.m., Saturdays at 8, and Sundays at 2:30. An additional matinee has been scheduled for Nov. 5. Tickets are $30, $25 for senior citizens (except on Saturdays), $15 for those under 35, and $10 for students under 21.

Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor will present a new All Star Comedy show, hosted by Joseph Vecsey, tomorrow at 8 p.m. Mr. Vecsey, a stand-up veteran, continues to turn up on television and YouTube as one of the UnMovers in new spots for Optimum Cable TV. He also hosts “The Call Back,” a podcast that features interviews with noted comedians.

His three guests are Ken Krantz, who has his own show at Gotham Comedy Club and has been featured on SiriusXM radio; Gary Vider, who first hit the New York comedy circuit when he was fired from his receptionist job, and Billy Prinsell, a regular at Caroline’s on Broadway and one of Comedy Central’s top comics to watch in 2015. Tickets are $30 in advance, $40 the day of the show.

On Saturday, the musician Alfredo Merat will channel the spirit of Jacques Brel, the Belgian singer, songwriter, and actor, in “Brel by Alfredo.”

Brel died in 1978, and this performance coincides with the 50-year anniversary of his farewell concerts at the Olympia Theater in Paris, part of the acclaimed artist’s long goodbye from live performances. 

Mr. Merat, a popular performer of Latin music on the South Fork who lives in Springs, was born in Madrid and grew up in France. In a 90-minute performance, he will sing in French and speak about Mr. Brel’s life in English.

Tickets for “Brel by Alfredo” are $25 and are available at the Bay Street box office or at baystreet.org.

The Mandala Yoga Center in Amagansett will present a concert of Merasi Indian music on Sunday evening at 6. The Merasi musicians use music to share their cultural heritage and bring to life stories of Indian history. Their infectious rhythms spring from 38 generations of musicians who have performed for Rajput kings and at temple festivals. 

Tickets are $35 and will benefit the Musical Narrative Project.