Maia Ruth Lee and Peter Sutherland, an artistic couple with varying viewpoints and methods, have individual shows at the Fireplace Project in Springs, both of which seem reflective of the country’s mood on the eve of a divisive  presidential election and in the wake of a global wave of violence and uncertainty.

In a show called “Santa Carla,” Mr. Sutherland’s benches and wall pieces smolder with flames, fireworks, and sunsets (or are they sunrises?) as subjects. The colors are fiery reds and oranges, presented through screens that give them the optical quality of road signs. The town it references in California is known primarily as the setting for the 1987 movie “The Lost Boys,” about a beach town beset by violence and vampires. 

Fiery rhetoric, gunfire, explosions — all of these themes from recent world events appear here. In previous works involving benches, Mr. Sutherland used sweeping panoramas of Western landscapes. Here, the benches called “Kingsford” are tinted a charcoal carbon black, with seat backs that depict a leaping conflagration. The idea that a seat, a place of respite and comfort, could spontaneously combust offers a sense of the suddenness and randomness of terrorism.

Only the images of fishing lures, in happy colors, printed on vinyl and mounted on a rock face, offer some relief from the implied threat and hell-scape Mr. Sutherland has devised. The heat wave outside just makes it smolder more.

In this environment, it seems no accident that Ms. Lee’s show is called “Casual Water.” But even here, she implies the water is temporary, a puddle that will eventually evaporate, as “casual water” is defined on a golf course. 

It is not abundantly clear what her wrought-iron wall sculptures have to do with H2O, but they are pretty and decorative. Their forms are glyphs, devices  of personal meaning that might be language, or symbols, or her own lexicon.

She said in an interview that her Korean parents are Bible translators in Nepal and had to develop their own alphabet for the oral language of Sherpa, an experience that awakened her to the visual possibilities of designing these types of symbols for her art.

The shapes and forms of these works are taken from older building decorations with her own spin. Some look like classic metal pub games and seem engaging. Others have a more threatening presence, like symbols of a saint’s martyrdom or a voodoo doll. The titles also offer a vague unease. “Everyman for Himself” points with a dagger downward in a symbol that might be taken for abstracted male genitalia or a mix of female and male reproductive organs.

The title “Going Up?” for a piece that looks like an old elevator monitor has a binary meaning as well. Is it an invitation, a mixed promise, or a veiled threat? It’s almost a relief when one piece is simply called “Welded Composition.” It takes the pressure off imagining what perils it might imply. 

It’s telling that none of these glyphs made it onto her chart of “Auspicious Glyphs of 2016.” Perhaps it is because they were not realized yet, but the suggestion that they are otherwise gives them a darker presence.

Mostly, however, the installation is peaceful and quiet, an effective balm for the fire and brimstone in the other room, and the suggestions otherwise can be hummed out of one’s head.

Even if it wasn’t intentional to hold the shows during the two political party conventions this summer, the timing is perfect. The art makes you feel like the random thoughts and visions of apocalypse running through your head all month aren’t so crazy after all; that maybe we are all going through our own reckoning, hopefully in time to save us. 

The show remains on view through Aug. 15.

First there were cat videos, which were shown in Southampton earlier this summer. Now, the canine crowd will have their chance to celebrate their favorite pets at the Dog Film Festival on Tuesday at Guild Hall.

The two screenings, at 4 and 6:30 p.m., will offer a mix of documentaries, animated, and live-action shorts by filmmakers from all over the world. The festival has traveled nationally since its premiere in New York in October, and will continue to travel to a total of 12 sites through the fall. Each screening will offer a completely different program and run about 90 minutes.

The earlier screening is more family-oriented with animated stories, humorous musings, an educational piece, and a short film featuring Weimaraners called “The Hardly Boys in Hardly Gold” by William Wegman. “Useful Dog Tricks” demonstrates how dogs can be trained to help around the house. 

At the second screening, there will be 14 short documentary, narrative, and subtitled narrative films. Subjects include a dogwalker with 20 charges, a service dog program that pairs the dogs with women in prison for training, and a scientist who turns himself into a dog from France.

These screenings will benefit the Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons, which will receive 50 percent of the box office sales and 10,000 bowls of free pet food. The Animal Rescue Fund of the Hamptons will participate by bringing adoptable dogs from the shelter, who might just find a home among the audience members.

Tracie Hotchner, a former East Hampton resident and still frequent visitor, is the festival founder.

A pre-screening afternoon tea Pooch Party on Sunday from 4 to 6 p.m. will welcome both dogs and their escorts at the residence of Jewel Morris in Water Mill. Ms. Morris is a founder of the Pet Philanthropy Circle. Tickets for the party are by invitation only and cost $150. The festival, which is open to the public, costs $20. Tickets can be purchased at dogfilmfestival.com. 

“Betting on Zero” isn’t your typical summer blockbuster, even for a documentary. There are no absolute winners and, arguably, no clear heroes. It’s not about kids or animals, and it is set in the until-recently lackluster world of finance. 

That said, “Betting on Zero” evolves into a compelling story that centers on one man’s quest to take down a company for financial gain as well as an overriding sense that it has a flawed and harmful business model. It will be shown at Guild Hall on Aug. 6, the second in the Hamptons International Film Festival’s SummerDocs program.

Theodore Braun, the director, said his interest in Bill Ackman’s crusade against the company Herbalife evolved from his curiosity about how money functioned in American life after seeing how it worked in the operation of international justice in his 2007 film “Darfur Now.” After teaming up with Glen Zipper, the producer, they began exploring several stories involving American corporate conflict. 

In December 2012, Mr. Ackman asserted that Herbalife, a California company that sells shakes and other nutritional products, was a pyramid scheme that defrauded its distributors. He and his hedge fund, Pershing Square, took a $1 billion dollar position against the company by shorting its stock, under the assumption that the government would shut it down and its market value would fall to zero.

“The idea of a hedge-fund billionaire on a moral crusade against a company that promises health, wealth, and a shot at the American dream caught my eye.” Mr. Braun said, in what could be the film’s elevator pitch. “The fact that it was unfolding in a present-tense battle that was likely to be resolved in a short period of time made it seem like it would be a good subject.”

The Federal Trade Commission, however, ended up taking more than two years to wrap up its investigation of Herbalife. It announced its findings on July 15. “The length of time it took for the F.T.C. to act surprised me and surprised everyone involved,” he said. The filmmakers went into production within a month or so of the announcement of the investigation. “Everyone at that point thought it would be wrapped up in a matter of months.”

As it dragged on, they followed Mr. Ackman and his actions during the period and interviewed executives and distributors of Herbalife who ultimately declined to be included in the film. Instead, the filmmakers had to rely on public statements and taped interviews by news organizations to relay that side of the story. 

The film became framed on a failed attempt by Mr. Ackman to persuade investors that Herbalife’s business model was unsustainable and how he got to that point, including his decision to short the company. This included interviewing and following the activities of distributors who lost significant amounts money trying to sell Herbalife’s products using its business model.

Supporters of the company have questioned the perspective presented in the documentary. Although Herbalife did not participate, the company’s “point of view is fully and scrupulously presented,” Mr. Braun said. Based on many off-the-record interviews with both present and former executives and distributors, “their point of view and understanding of what they’re doing, and their take on Ackman’s short and on what the company is all about is represented quite fully and fairly.”

He said that not having Herbalife’s participation cost his team a great deal of time and money, both in the several-month effort to interview Herbalife representatives and then having to rethink the film and track down available footage. “All of us on the film were curious about the battle. We didn’t have a dog in the fight. We wanted to understand what was really going on and how it would all play out.”

The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April in the absence of the F.T.C.’s findings. Without its verdict, the filmmakers had to find a satisfying way to end the film while the story was still unfolding. “The verdict was left hanging in a way that we were not able to clearly indicate how the audience should regard what we presented.”

He said the filmmakers were pleased that “the F.T.C.’s findings were so in sync with what we found in our own two years of work.” Edith Ramirez, the commission’s chairwoman, said in her announcement, “This settlement will require Herbalife to fundamentally restructure its business so that participants are rewarded for what they sell, not how many people they recruit. . . . Herbalife is going to have to start operating legitimately, making only truthful claims about how much money its members are likely to make, and it will have to compensate consumers for the losses they have suffered as a result of what we charge are unfair and deceptive practices.”

In the announcement, the chairwoman did not call Herbalife a “pyramid scheme” specifically. Carl Icahn, an investor in and supporter of Herbalife, issued a statement saying that the F.T.C. concluded that Herbalife was not a pyramid scheme. Ms. Ramirez said she did not agree. Yet, her Sphinx-like response — “They were not determined not to be a pyramid” — left some people’s heads spinning.

Audience members at the film’s screening at Guild Hall will see end cards in the film that reflect the new information. “Because the F.T.C.’s complaint is so in concert with what the viewers will have experienced in the film, the slight changes will feel very satisfying and will wrap it up in a nice package,” Mr. Braun said.

Eventually, “There may be additional footage. . . . We want an ending that reflects the F.T.C. decision.” He said the drama of what went on the day of the commission’s announcement, Mr. Icahn’s press release, the F.T.C.’s  refutation of the press release, and the market’s reaction are all things he would love to explore “if money and time were not an object.”

Yes, the only person who cares about grandmother’s collection of needlepoint-slogan pillows may be grandmother, but it is still fun to spot some old bit of her bedroom furniture or her favorite egg-beater at Hamptons prices at a summer antiques show.

The East Hampton Historical Society is offering up its annual bazaar this weekend at Mulford Farm, with a preview cocktail party tomorrow evening.

Featuring vintage decorative arts, the show will display home and garden objects such as rattan and bamboo furniture, lighting, textiles, architectural elements, hand-painted furniture, outdoor ornaments, and wrought-iron accessories. Old commercial items such as trade signs and objects related to industry will also be for sale.

The show was organized by Ferguson & D’Arruda Antiques of Providence, R.I. Admission is $10 from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, with early admission at 9 a.m. Saturday for $20. Sunday’s hours of operation are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Tomorrow’s cocktail party preview will take place from 6 to 8:30, with music provided by Jane Hastay and Peter Martin Weiss and catering by Brent Newsom. Tickets are $150; $100 for those age 40 and under, and are available at the historical society’s website or at the gate.

When Michael Cohen was 15, growing up outside Philadelphia in Cheltenham, Pa., his father told him and his brother it was time to get summer jobs. “My brother went to work in a pet store, because he was interested in fish and reptiles,” Mr. Cohen recalled one sunny afternoon in the garden of East Hampton’s 1770 House. “I said I’m going to work at a restaurant as a busboy. I found a job at a really swanky restaurant, and I got the bug. I’ve had a passion for wine and hospitality ever since.”

The bug has led him, with a few interruptions along the way, to his present position as 1770 House’s restaurant manager and sommelier. A turning point came when, after two and a half years at Penn State, he decided to take a break from college. A friend was sous chef at the Striped Bass, one of Philadelphia’s top eateries. “I was 21, I had no business being a server there, but he said he could get me some lunch shifts. Within two weeks I was told to go next door to Kenneth Cole to pick up two suits. I was hired, and that would be my uniform.”

The sommelier at the restaurant was Marnie Old, widely recognized as one of the country’s leading wine experts and, according to Mr. Cohen, “the reason I am where I am today. She had this amazing presence in the dining room, and she started doing Saturday afternoon classes for the staff. So she might say, ‘Today you’re going to taste white Burgundy,’ and she’d give us eight different examples to taste. The following week we did American chardonnay. That was my introduction to wine. From there I just started reading about wine, I bought the books and studied and learned.”

In 2002, he spent the first of two summers in East Hampton. A close family friend had invited him to stay at his house in Northwest Woods, which had a separate apartment. “If you’re in Philly, you don’t do the Hamptons, you do the Jersey Shore. I had never been here before. I came out for the summer, it was dark out, I had no idea where I was. I woke up in a house on Sammy’s Beach with a deck overlooking the water and thought, ‘You’re kidding, right?’ ”

He took his resumé, which by then included several high-end Philadelphia restaurants, to Nick and Toni’s, Della Femina, and East Hampton Point, and was offered jobs by all of them. He chose East Hampton Point, in part because the chef was from the Philadelphia area. That same year, the 1770 House reopened under new owners, who also owned, East Hampton Point. 

“I really wanted to work at 1770, which started importing staff from East Hampton Point, but they said no. I was a little bummed but still had a great summer, and I came back the following year.”

After the second summer, Mr. Cohen decided to finish college. He enrolled at Temple University in Philadelphia, earned a degree in broadcast communications, and then headed for New York City, where he quickly progressed from an internship to a full-time position with a media company producing music videos and national commercials. He stayed for two years before his life took another turn.

“It was 10 years ago. I was sitting in my office, and the phone rang, and it was my boss, who said, ‘Those commercials you were going to shoot this summer? You’re not.’ ”

“Manhattan isn’t the best place to be in the summer if you don’t have to, so I called my friend Danielle in East Hampton and said, ‘I’m coming out. I need a job, a car, and a place to live.’ ”

He stayed with Danielle until he found his own place. She gave him a beat-up Saab that died at the end of the summer, and he was hired as a server at 1770 House, where she was assistant manager. Halfway through that summer, the inn’s owners opened Wei Fun on Pantigo Lane in East Hampton and transferred Kevin Penner, the chef, and Carol Covell, the general manager, to the new venue. 

“They asked me to take over as manager of the 1770 House. If it had been any other place I would have refused, but the program here was already established, and my predecessor had handed off a very, very nice wine list. It was a no-brainer. It was 2006. I came for the summer and never left.” 

That same year he began his formal training to become certified as a sommelier. Among the accreditors are the American Sommelier Association, the Sommelier Society of America, and the Guild of Master Sommeliers. Mr. Cohen began with the S.S.A., which involved an intensive 16-week course taught on the East End by Chris Miller, an advanced-level sommelier familiar with the local restaurant scene. 

“His level isn’t easy to achieve,” said Mr. Cohen. “We’re talking about having to pour a magnum of champagne across 20 flutes in a continuous stream without letting it bubble over, while the instructor is firing questions at you and asking for wine pairings.” That particular challenge was a reminder that mastering service is as important for a sommelier as skill at blind tasting.

The 1770 House, which is owned by Ben and Bonnie Krupinski, has between 250 and 300 different wines on its list and an inventory in the thousands. “The Krupinskis are wine lovers and collectors and really support what we’re doing here,” he said. The restaurant has received Wine Spectator magazine’s Award of Excellence every year since 2007.

“When I’m tableside, I try to paint a picture of what the wines are and let the customers decide. I never force people into specific bottles of wine. I’ve been to restaurants where it’s blatant that the sommelier is trying to talk a patron into a more expensive bottle. That’s not ethical, and I don’t think it’s comfortable for the customer. I paint the picture, I describe the bottle, and if I have a story about it, I’ll take them there. And then I let them decide.”

Mr. Cohen feels one of the best ways to learn about wine is to drink it. He belongs to a local wine club. Its members — “wine nerds,” he said — include Roman Roth, the winemaker and a partner at Wolffer Estate Vineyard, various wine salespeople, and winemakers from the North Fork. “We decide on a genre, say a Napa Valley Cab from 2010, and we’ll each bring one in a plain paper bag. In a blind tasting, you really have to judge on taste alone, and more often than not it’s the least expensive bottles that people rate the highest.”

After months of silence and speculation, Guild Hall announced last Thursday that Andrea Grover has been named executive director to replace Ruth Appelhof, who is retiring.

Ms. Grover will begin her appointment on Sept. 1. She has been a curator of special projects at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill since 2011. Her most recent curatorial project, “Radical Seafaring,” has been well received by critics and audiences and has defined a new category of contemporary art, “offshore art.”

She said last week that she was delighted by the appointment, and by the multidisciplinary mission of Guild Hall’s programming. “The name ‘Guild Hall’ means gathering place and lends itself to the cross-pollination of the arts and other branches of knowledge, a home for the meeting of minds,” she said.

Known for her successful efforts to build communities within East End art circles, as well as in Houston, where she was founder and director of the Aurora Picture Show, she has also served as an adviser for arts foundations such as Creative Capital, the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts.

She said her appointment will bring new opportunities to work together with the Parrish Art Museum “to make the East End creative community even greater.”

Ms. Grover has been a Warhol curatorial fellow at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and a Center for Curatorial Leadership fellow at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Ms. Appelhof announced her retirement last year. She will stay in the area to work on several book projects.  

The Upright Citizens Brigade comedy-training schools have produced so many hot names in the industry that you never know if the performers you’re seeing on its stages in New York and Los Angeles will be the next Aziz Ansari, Kate McKinnon, Jack McBrayer, or Rob Corddry.

But you don’t have to trek all the way to Manhattan or Los Angeles to catch the Upright Citizens Brigade. Its touring company is coming to Guild Hall next Thursday for a 90-minute improvised comedy show that will call on audience members to play a role in its direction.

According to Andy Bustillos, an Upright Citizens Brigade performer who will appear in the show next Thursday, the first half will involve an interview with an audience member and an instantaneous sketch performance based on the questions and answers given during that interview. In the second half, the comedians will ask audience members to read them text messages from their cellphones without any context and will then perform off-the-cuff bits based on those messages.

“It’s free-improvised and nothing is planned ahead of time,” said Mr. Bustillos, who hails from Astoria, Queens.

The Upright Citizens Brigade Tour Co. features a lineup of 16 comedians who perform all over the country in groups of four that frequently change. The particular group of four coming to Guild Hall, which also includes A.J. Patton, Tanner Dahlin, and Lui Vega, has never performed together before, which has the potential to make the show even more intriguing, Mr. Bustillos said. Another aspect that makes this show different is the venue itself.

“We’re used to colleges with 18 to 21-year-olds, so it will be interesting to see what kind of interview we get, what kind of stories we hear, and what makes people laugh in that room, because it’s different in every place,” Mr. Bustillos said.

Mr. Bustillos has been training with the Upright Citizens Brigade for about six years and has a background in acting as well as comedy, having appeared in commercials for companies including Taco Bell, Delta Airlines, and Trojan Condoms. He described Mr. Dahlin as “a gentleman cowboy” who is “super goofy and wonderful.” He said Mr. Patton “has a great mustache and is very, very funny.” And Mr. Vega “is a very, very good actor” whose style is intense.

The show promises to be high energy, as the performers have been known to down Red Bull energy drinks minutes before they hit the stage, Mr. Bustillos said.

The Upright Citizens Brigade’s comedy school was started in 1997 by Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh, a heavy-hitting, long-form sketch comedy quartet from Chicago. The show next Thursday starts at 8 p.m.; tickets are $22 to $45, or $20 to $43 for Guild Hall members. It is recommended for those ages 16 and up.

“It’s always so much fun,” Mr. Bustillos said. “Because you interview someone from the space, everyone feels connected to the show. What we’re doing is based off of that and they can relate to it very clearly.”

As much as purists love a meaty, topical play, everyone can appreciate a good farce now and then, particularly in the summer. Purpled Pheasant Productions, a new professional theater group based at the Southampton Cultural Center, has chosen to introduce itself through the latter.

“The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Abridged” was conceived in 1987 for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield. The company has updated the script’s contemporary references, from MTV to Google and Instagram, with a couple of nods to a certain presidential candidate.

As improvised and interpreted as the play seems, there are defined roles, and the cast plays the roles originated by the three authors. As accessible as the format is, some people who have never quite understood Shakespeare’s language and plots might still feel as though something like this would be over their heads.

The authors addressed this by spending the most time on the most famous and oft-quoted plays and zipping through the early and less familiar works. Then, as an insurance policy, they keep the ribald humor flowing, in truncations of plays such as “Two Gentleman of Verona” and “Romeo and Juliet.”

“But love‚“ begins one actor in a scene from “Romeo and Juliet.” “Butt love? Dude, did you just say butt love?” responds another. Clearly not high art, but if you feel like accessing your inner 12-year old, it is giggle-inducing. Additionally it signals to the audience that something funny is going on in Shakespeare’s text, which 16th-century audiences appreciated in their time as well.

While the jokes fly across the stage, the actors also flit and race around, dueling with kids’ toys and riding pool noodles as horses. There is much cross-dressing as well, using silly wigs and other costuming to humorous effect. 

“Titus Andronicus” is reimagined as a cooking show, and “Othello” is done as a rap. “Macbeth” features silly Scottish brogues and dueling golf clubs. “Julius Caesar” borrows a famous line from Donald Trump: “You’re fired.” These major plays are dealt with summarily, but their essence is addressed rather well, given the time constraints.

Things start to speed up with the sonnets, the earliest plays, the history plays, and the comedy plays. Each category is lumped together for efficiency. The entire second act is reserved for “Hamlet,” transforming it into a time trial by the end. 

Audience members may find themselves onstage or otherwise participating in the production. They may also enjoy the “Game of Thrones” and South Fork references in this adaptation. Although there were many children present, some of the material was a bit mature for them, but the coarsest jokes seemed to go entirely over their heads.

The actors include two of the company’s founding members, Ian J. Harkins and Rafe Terrizzi, who have some ties to the area with an enthusiastic fan base of friends and family. They have also traveled far and wide for other productions and films. Mr. Harkins’s credits include roles in “Boardwalk Empire,” “American Hustle,” and plays throughout the United States and Europe. Mr. Terrizzi’s credits include more serious treatments of Shakespearean plays, such as “As You Like It” and “Henry IV, Part II.” Shannon Harris, who rounds out the trio, is a serious Shakespearean actress with roles in “The Winter’s Tale,” “Romeo and Juliet,” and “Comedy of Errors.” She has a master’s degree in classical acting from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London.

The actors are a tight, energetic team and deliver their lines with spot-on comedic timing. Their nimbleness of wit, language, and movement appears effortless, as light and bouncy as a summer sea breeze. They are graceful in even the most clumsily clownish maneuvering, and their high-energy hijinks are exhilarating and almost exhausting. 

This is the first of what Kimberly Loren Eaton, the company’s artistic producer, promised to be regular productions for the cultural center, giving Southampton its first professional theater company. Welcome!

Five years ago, when the restoration of the Thomas Moran House began in earnest, no one was willing to predict when it might ever end. The national historic landmark, on East Hampton Main Street opposite Town Pond, was in such bad shape, choked with many decades’ growth of ivy and listing precariously toward the street, that a Sandy-level storm could easily have done it in.

Enter the Thomas Moran Trust. With seed money from East Hampton Town and Village and the National Park Service and support from private and corporate donors and foundations, the trust engaged two prominent historic preservationists, Richard Barons and Robert Hefner, to direct the daunting task of restoration. Under their supervision, dozens of skilled craftsmen are well on their way to converting a falling-down wreck into a showplace that will one day become an educational arts center and gathering place for the East End community. 

Important work is yet to be done, but enormous progress has been made and the end is finally in sight. On Friday, July 29, the Moran Trust will celebrate the remarkable transformation of the Studio, as the structure is known, with a benefit cocktail party that will offer guests access not only to the turreted house, with its two-story-high front room where the renowned painter of “The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone” worked, but also to several outbuildings with interesting stories of their own.

These include the “bath house,” which was home to one of the little cabana-like buildings used as beach changing-rooms by well-to-do 19th-century families; the “boathouse,” where the Morans kept the gondola they’d brought over from Venice for excursions on Georgica Pond, and a little cottage built on Cape Cod and added to the grounds in 1910, where the artist may have slept when he was older and couldn’t get up to the third floor.

There was also the  “barn,” which had a little-known but equally intriguing purpose. Moran had a small windmill erected on the roof of the barn, which, Mr. Hefner explained last week, pumped water out of nearby Town Pond for the family’s use. When the East Hampton Ladies Village Improvement Society was founded in 1895, Moran, living as he did almost on top of dusty, unpaved Main Street, became an enthusiastic supporter of the society’s successful campaign for a street sprinkler, and his wind-pump was afterward used to fill the village’s brand-new street sprinkler and “lay the dust.”

A number of big East End art world names have mobilized in support of the Moran Trust and the renascence of the Studio, which was the first artist’s atelier built in East Hampton and a hub of the community’s emerging art colony. It is anticipated that the building, when complete, will become “a center for the story of artists,” Mr. Barons said, as well as a setting for concerts, lectures, plays, and the like, all of which were held there when Moran was alive. Rotating art shows will be another attraction.

Exterior painting, particularly of the outbuildings and the shingles on the house, has yet to be done, along with landscaping and work on a back porch and laundry, but most of the work that remains will be inside. Workmen were hustling this week to paint the front porch and the massive front doors — extra-tall and wide to allow Moran’s oversized canvases to get through — before the crowds descend on the 29th. 

Proceeds from the benefit will go to complete the restoration and furnish the Studio in the style to which it was accustomed; the East Hampton Historical Society, of which Mr. Barons is executive director, will advise on the furnishings and lend a number of its own treasures.

The Moran Trust has raised two-thirds of its goal to date and needs another $1.5 million to complete the project, Michael Clifford, a board member, said on Monday. The hope and expectation is to open the landmark to the public in August 2017, said Curtis Schade, chairman of the trust’s board of directors.

Tickets for the 6 to 8 p.m. party, which is co-chaired by Hollis Forbes and Mr. Clifford, start at $250. They are available by calling the office of the trust, 631-324-0100, or online at thomasmorantrust.org.

“Top Drawer: Stories of Dysfunction and Redemption From Park Avenue to Havana,” a one-woman show written and performed by Adelaide Mestre that combines music and storytelling, will be performed at Guild Hall in East Hampton on Tuesday evening at 7. 

First presented at the New York International Fringe Festival in 2011, the musical memoir draws on Ms. Mestre’s life growing up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side amid both privilege and tragedy, and her journey as an adult to Cuba to find the Steinway grand piano her father left behind when the family fled in 1960.

Her father was a concert pianist and a closeted homosexual whose well-to-do Cuban family didn’t support his dreams. Nevertheless, his grandfather gave him the Steinway when he was a little boy. Ms. Mestre’s mother was a socialite whose marriage to her father fell apart when he came out, but whose love for him endured while he struggled with his sexuality and after his suicide.

“My parents might not have been the easiest,” Ms. Mestre said during a recent visit to the house in Barnes Landing she shares with her husband and 2 1/2-year-old daughter. “But there’s so much rich material. All my plays have been autobiographical, but this is the one where I really got to the heart of it. I couldn’t move forward in my life without going back and putting all the pieces together and telling the story.”

Over the course of several years during which “Top Drawer” was performed at a number of New York City venues, Ms. Mestre kept her mother away from it as long as she could. “I was completely terrified to have her see it. I had friends who had gone to workshop readings, and she sent spies out to see how she was portrayed. She got the word that she was probably going to be able to tolerate it. I didn’t know if I could actually survive a performance with her in the audience.”

Ms. Mestre’s mother eventually saw the show a number of times before her death last year. “For me it was sort of like a coming out to my mother about my truth, about how all this stuff landed on me and how I processed it and took it all in. And now I was performing it onstage in front of people.”

While she was critical and judgmental with impossibly high standards, her mother emerges as “kind of the hero” because of her love for her husband. An emotional high point of the play is when Ms. Mestre portrays her mother singing a beautiful song recalling her love for him. “I think ultimately she liked the play. And I think it was actually healing for us, as I grew up in a family where we didn’t talk about things a lot.”

During the play, Ms. Mestre shifts between herself and other characters, among them her mother, a Cuban singing teacher who helped bring her out of her depression after her father died, and the Bulgarian ambassador to Cuba, whose residence had been her father’s home. While relatives who lived in Argentina had visited and photographed the piano, when Ms. Mestre finally got to Cuba the Steinway had disappeared.

In addition to moving between herself and other characters and between music and storytelling, Ms. Mestre also steps out of character and addresses the audience directly. “I have a circuitous way of talking, where I don’t always get to the point, and the show is sort of like that, with digressions by the present-day Adelaide confiding in her audience.”

Ms. Mestre has a long connection to the East End. She spent several childhood summers in East Hampton, where her grandmother had a house, a number of years with friends in share houses, and, most recently, 10 summers in the Barnes Landing cottage. When she first came to East Hampton as an adult, “it felt familiar to me, there was a nostalgia attached to it from when I was little. Doing the show out here feels very special to me.”

Producers in New York City have expressed interest in mounting the show off Broadway and taking it on tour. Tickets, which can be purchased at brownpapertickets.com, are $30, $28 for members.