For a few short weeks, the galleries at Guild Hall will bring East Africa to East Hampton through the local and international photography and collage work of Peter Beard.

In the high-flying 1960s and ’70s, Mr. Beard was known on the society pages for hobnobbing with the likes of Andy Warhol, Mick Jagger, and those Kardashian sisters of their generation, Jacqueline Onassis and Lee Radziwill. At the same time, he was also a serious and concerned chronicler of the dwindling population of big-game wildlife in Kenya.

“Peter Beard: Last Word From Paradise,” which opens on Saturday, will mark his first museum exhibition in 15 years and his first showing of the many portraits he took in Montauk of those friends and others, as well as some of his breathtaking images of rhinos, elephants, crocodiles, and other African wildlife. His diaries and collages function as field notes and scrapbooks, with densely packed observations alternating with images or souvenirs of the landscape — dried leaves and insects, for example, mixed in with clippings and the blood of animals and himself.

Throughout his photographs and monographs, beginning in the ’60s, Mr. Beard’s concern for the environment of Kenya is always paramount, and has remained so in subsequent accounts. He described the landscape he first saw in 1955 as “authentic, unspoiled, teeming with big game — so enormous it appeared inexhaustible.” Now he sees Kenya’s human population of 30 million as pushing the wildlife out of the country by draining the natural resources of its habitat.

The show will be divided into the two geographical areas, “exploring the artist’s visions of Kenya and Montauk as encampments/refuges where his art and life converge,” according to Christina Strassfield, the curator of the exhibition and director of Guild Hall’s museum. The exhibition will remain on view through July 31.

During that same time, Guild Hall’s grounds, as well as one of its galleries, will be taken over by the sculpture of Carol Ross. Her work consists of large and colorful metal works suggestive of monumental ancient sculpture and smaller wall reliefs. Donald Kuspit, a scholar of American modern art and a critic, has said of her sculptures that “they’re bound to the earth, as though gaining their strength, their durability from it. In contrast, the wall works have a lyric intimacy, a lighter-than-air feeling; indeed, seem to float free of the earth.”

Ms. Ross’s work will remain on view through October.

An opening reception for the two shows will be held on Saturday from 4 to 6 p.m.

The Choral Society of the Hamptons will perform the world premiere of “The Reluctant Moses,” part of a new oratorio by Victoria Bond, on June 25 at 7 p.m. at the Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor. Commissioned by the society, the work is scored for solo bass vocalist, solo string bass, chorus, and orchestra, and will share the evening’s program with Beethoven’s “Mass in C.” 

Ms. Bond, a composer and conductor well known to East End audiences for her pre-opera lectures at Guild Hall, uses text from the Old Testament in her new composition, which focuses on Moses’s encounter with the burning bush and God’s injunction to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Dedicated to her father and grandfather, the work is the first installment of a concert-length oratorio that will continue the story of Moses with additional movements. 

Ms. Bond’s music has been performed by the New York City Opera, Dallas Symphony, Shanghai Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, members of the New York Philharmonic, and many others. The Anchorage Opera recently performed a semi-staged production of her opera “Mrs. President.” A sought-after lecturer, Ms. Bond is a part-time East Hampton resident.

Although “Mass in C” has the power of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and the lyricism of his “Pastorale,” it has been neglected in modern concerts, according to the choral society, which emphasizes “its extraordinary variety of texture and sudden shifts in dynamic levels.”

The concert will be conducted by the society’s music director, Mark Mangini. The soloists are Ileana Santamaria, soprano, Charlene Marcinko, mezzo-soprano, Sean Christensen, tenor, and Joseph Beutel, bass-baritone. John Feeney, on string bass, and the South Fork Chamber Orchestra will accompany the singers.

Tickets are $30 in advance, $35 at the door, with youth tickets available for $10 in advance, $15 at the door, and preferred-seating tickets priced at $75. Immediately after the concert, the society will hold a benefit wine and dessert reception for the soloists, conductor, and composer. Reservations can be made for $50; admission at the door is $60.

The Choral Society of the Hamptons is an auditioned chorus that performs with professional conductors, soloists, orchestra, and accompanists. It has presented high-quality choral music on the East End since the late Charlotte Rogers Smith, a local choir director, founded it in 1946.

More information and advance tickets to both the concert and the reception are available at the choral society’s website. Looking ahead, the society’s 70th anniversary benefit will be held Sept. 24 at the Woodhouse Playhouse in East Hampton.

Correction: An earlier verion of this article misstated the form of Ms. Bond's composition, referring to it incorrectly as an opera. It is the first installment of a concerto-length oratorio.

A staged reading of Joe Pintauro’s play “Men’s Lives” will take place tomorrow at 6 p.m. at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill in conjunction with its current exhibition, “Radical Seafaring.” The play, which premiered in 1992 as the opening production of the Bay Street Theater, tells the story of the struggle of East End baymen to continue their centuries-old tradition of making a living on the water.

The reading is produced by Stephen Hamilton and Emma Walton Hamilton, who will also direct. The cast features J. Stephen Brantley, Matthew Conlon, Kristen Lowman, Cashus Muse, Joe Pallister, Josh Salt, Harris Yulin, and Mr. Hamilton.

Art is on the menu at c/o the Maidstone inn in East Hampton Village this month. Two Swedish artists, Jacob Fellander, a photographer, and Anders Wendin a/k/a Moneybrother, a musician, will be in residence there through Monday, exploring the dynamic relationship between photography and music. The results of their work will hang on the walls and play from the speakers throughout the year. 

The Living Room, the inn’s restaurant, will feature a “Food Is Art” menu, inspired by Mr. Fellander’s photographs, throughout the month, and guests can select photographs from the in-room art collection and scents from the inn’s aromatherapy collection.

“You and Me the Movie,” a documentary by Taylor Montemarano, a Montauk native, and Lorenzo DeCampos, will be shown at the Surf Lodge in Montauk tomorrow at 7 p.m.

The film is the story of Barney Miller, an emerging professional surfer in Australia who became a quadriplegic after a car accident 17 years ago. The filmmakers began the project as a short film for college but were so inspired by the story of his determination and his relationships with Kate Southwell, his wife-to-be, and Mick Fanning, a world surfing champion, that they shot 500 hours of footage on two continents over a four-and-a-half-year period.

The free program will begin with a cocktail hour, which will be followed by the screening from 8 to 9:30 and a question-and-answer session with the filmmakers. Reservations can be made at youandmemontaukpremiere.splash­that.com.

The Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival is accepting submissions for this year’s event, which will take place at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor in December. The regular deadline for submissions is June 30; the late deadline is July 10. Submission applications and more information can be found at ht2ff.com.

The festival has also announced that more than 50 films featured in its festivals since 2008 are now available as part of the circulating collection of the Hampton Library in Bridgehampton.

Garden Dialogues, a program of the Cultural Landscape Foundation, which opens private residential gardens to the public, will feature a newly constructed Colonial Revival home and an acre of formal gardens in Southampton Village on Saturday afternoon from 1 to 3.

Sawyer/Berson, an interdisciplinary firm in New York City, was commissioned to design the landscape, architecture, and interiors of the house, which is situated within a series of formal gardens, courts, and terraces. Brian Sawyer will be present to discuss the project.

Tickets, priced at $100, can be purchased through the foundation’s website, tclf.org. The address of the property will be provided only to registrants.

La Compagnia Amarilli, a vocal duet consisting of Kinga Cserjesi, soprano, and Deborah Carmichael, mezzo-soprano, will perform at St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in Bridgehampton on Saturday at 5 p.m. The concert will feature music by Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Handel, and others, and will be presented in a storytelling format in which music will be interwoven with a fairy tale. The production’s director is Beate Mathois, and Douglas Martin will accompany the singers on piano.

Admission is $15 at the door. All proceeds will benefit East End Hospice.

While many are aware that the actor and comedian Steve Martin also has a vigorous writing career, few are aware of how many of these genres he has excelled in. There are the screenplays, which include the hit films “The Jerk” and “L.A. Story”; the novels, including the bestseller “Shopgirl”; the essays for The New Yorker, and the plays, including the popular “Picasso at the Lapin Agile.” As a writer, Mr. Martin doesn’t exactly plumb the Dostoevskian depths of the human soul: He tends toward light, breezy comedy that utilizes his broad West Coast sensibility. He is a writer who understands his authorial limits, and keeping his ambitions modest usually nails what he sets out to accomplish. 

This must be what attracted Mr. Martin to adapt Carl Sternheim’s farcical play “The Underpants,” a production of which is running through June 26 at East Hampton’s John Drew Theater at Guild Hall. Sternheim’s original, “Die Hose,” was written in 1910 and utilizes comedy that doubles as a critique of German bourgeois culture at the fin de siecle. Though funny and well acted, audiences should be aware that this current production of Mr. Martin’s “Underpants” is performed as farce with a capital F. 

The setting is an average apartment in Dusseldorf where scandal has just befallen a young married couple, Theo and Louise Maske. While attending a parade for the king, Louise’s underwear has mysteriously fallen to her ankles, an event witnessed by a large crowd. The young woman is now the focus of much gossip in the city and is a source great consternation for her husband. Theo is a government clerk of the most middling kind. Petty, unimaginative, and obsessed with security, he is petrified that his wife’s scandal will cost him his job. “Look what you’ve done to me!” he exclaims with typical self-centeredness, to which Louise replies, “I didn’t do anything to you.” The marriage, we soon learn, is teetering. 

Enter Versati, the young poet. The Maskes have an empty room to rent, and the poet is highly motivated to occupy it — he has beheld firsthand Louise’s dropped undergarment and is dutifully impressed. Left alone with her, he peppers the wife with snippets of half-baked romantic poetry. Egged on by Gertrude, a spinster neighbor who lives vicariously through Louise, the young wife becomes smitten with him. To consummate this attraction, however, the two will have to go through Benjamin Cohen, a nebbishy barber who also lusts for Louise and will come to share the empty room with Versati. 

It’s not clear exactly why Mr. Martin thought this material would have resonance for a contemporary audience. By today’s standards, Louise’s wardrobe malfunction seems like the height of innocence. And in the age of Tinder and internet pornography, sexual repression isn’t a particularly acute American problem. The play’s feminist element seems especially dated: Theo browbeats Louise as a silly toy wife. (There is even a birdcage prop as part of the set, meant as a metaphor for her life.) But who believes anymore that women are being encouraged to stay home and play house? 

Of course, a play doesn’t have to be fully in line with contemporary mores to be funny, and “The Underpants” has plenty of laughs. Most of these come from the many double entendres that Mr. Martin manages to mine from the original German, and particularly as uttered by Theo, played with blustery vigor by Mark David Watson. Speaking of the gossip about Louise’s fallen bloomers, for example, Theo says it has “spread by itself.” And when he makes a pass at Gertrude, who rebuffs him by stating that she’s too old, he replies that “rivers of water can still flow through rusty pipes” — a joke that got plenty of guffaws from the middle-aged Guild Hall crowd. 

Among the other noteworthy performances was one by Marianna McClellan, who plays Louise in a state of breathy anticipation, as if forever on the brink of the orgasm she so desperately needs. Sabrina Profitt, meanwhile, plays Gertrude with sure-fire timing, effortlessly capturing the nosy neighbor who builds intrigue out of boredom. 

And let no one say Daniel Passer plays it safe with his portrayal of the poet Versati. In fact, there may be moments where you think the director, Bill Fennelly, has let him (or encouraged him, for all we know) wander too far into histrionics. With his rrrrolllinggg consonants and outrageously emphatic head and hand gestures, his performance almost becomes a parody of itself. Still, there is pleasure in watching an actor going big with a risky performance.  

So the “The Underpants” begs questions: How broad is too broad? When does farce become absurdity? This current production, I believe, crosses the line and then pulls it back again, sometimes from one moment to the next. All of which makes for a fun, if uneven, night of theater. 

Nick Tarr saves stuff, and he always has. “I need things,” he said. “I don’t paint things.” The boxes he made for 20 years and with which he is perhaps most closely identified are jam-packed with objects and images he has accumulated. So, too, are his more recent scanographs and a series of spatially ambiguous photographs that testify to his compulsive and wide-ranging collecting.

A visit to his East Hampton basement studio brought to mind the French word bricolage, which refers to a construction made using available materials. The anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss used the term to characterize patterns of mythological thought, which, unlike scientific thinking, attempt to reuse available materials to solve new problems.

One example is a jerry-built stage set in Mr. Tarr’s basement. Posters, photographs, record album covers, and other objects dangle in a circle from the ceiling, surrounding a blue glass sphere that sits on a table. His photographs capture both the distorted reflections of the objects on the surface of the sphere and the images visible through and behind it. The result is a visual collage that converts a random collection of objects into something dematerialized and difficult to decipher.

His scanographs utilize familiar technology to achieve surprising results. The photographs are taken with a scanner — “a very short depth-of-field, fixed-focus camera” — which is used to create an image of a collage of objects placed on it at the same time. Whether two or three-dimensional, the elements become flattened through the process. The works combine objects that have a clear and often personal meaning to Mr. Tarr with others he has collected without knowing why. “Anything is fair game. The universe is my palette.”

“I’ve been very involved with collage since I was a kid,” he said. “When color copiers first appeared, you had to go to a copy center, since the machine was so big. I’d convince the copy expert to let me work on my own. I’d open my bag of tricks and gewgaws and gimcracks and winking, blinking things and put them on the bed. Because the bar would pass three times, one for each color, you could move things around between each pass and get some interesting results.”

Similar objects populate his boxes, which are essentially dioramas into which you peer through a lens that creates the illusion of a deep three-dimensional space inside a cube less than a foot on each side. The literal three-dimensionality of objects in a small space is also something else, “a kind of virtual reality attained without using electronics. I’m not a high-tech guy.” The juxtapositions of objects and images in his work are often funny and invariably eccentric. 

Mr. Tarr’s work deals with interiority, reflection, distortion, transparency, solidity, and a kind of magic or sleight of hand. He comes by both his career as an artist and his interest in magic honestly. His parents were Bill Tarr, an acclaimed sculptor, and Yvonne Young Tarr, an award-winning playwright and the author of more than 20 cookbooks. 

“I took art classes, but as a child I grew up helping my father. We used to hang out in the studio and just play.” He recalls being at a Whitney Biennial in the early 1960s, “when I was in single digits,” and roughhousing with one of his father’s pieces on view there until a guard shooed him away.

Less known in the art world was that Bill Tarr was the prolific author of a number of best-selling books on magic, the most famous of which were “Now You See It, Now You Don’t! Lessons in Sleight of Hand” (1976) and its sequel, “The Second Now You See It.” He recalls prominent magicians of a younger generation thanking his father for getting them started on ca eers in magic.

Nick Tarr was born in New York City but raised in Scarsdale, N.Y., where the family moved when he was 5. At that time his father had a studio on Greene Street in SoHo, to which he commuted by motorcycle. The Tarrs moved to Springs in 1976 and lived there, on Fireplace Road, until they relocated to Sarasota, Fla., in 1997. For many years one of Bill Tarr’s steel sculptures, a 40-foot-tall, 63-ton memorial to Martin Luther King Jr., which had been installed at P.S.6 in New York City, resided on the property. He also created “Gates of Hell,” a monumental bronze casting for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. He died in 2006, three years after his wife.

A former garage in Nick Tarr’s East Hampton house is filled with his father’s artwork, including steel sculptures, paintings, watercolors, and 16mm films. He is actively involved in preserving, documenting, and digitizing his father’s work. “When my dad passed away, I made every effort to save his work, because to me not only are they beautiful things, they represent work by somebody I think was a very brave man as an artist. He was my role model.”

Pointing out one of the steel sculptures, which are rather like massive collages of smaller elements, he said, “I worked with my father and learned a lot from him. I went on to do stuff that was very, very different. His pieces are all external surfaces, in a way, and I went on to do these boxes that are all interior spaces. I guess that’s how I could follow in my folks’ footsteps and still do something that was different.”

Mr. Tarr is also the curator of this summer’s Springs Invitational Exhibition, which will be held at Ashawagh Hall in in August. This year’s exhibition will honor four longtime members of the East End’s creative community, “not for shallow fame and ostentatious philanthropy but for a lifetime of achievement as artists diligently working to push the edges of the creative envelope,” he said. Those artists are Margie Kerr, Athos Zacharias, A.C. Mim, and Alex Russo. Mr. Tarr also made an effort to bring in younger artists not previously included in the exhibition.