The Watermill Center will present an open rehearsal on Sunday from 3 to 5 p.m. of a performance by Lisa Ross, a visual artist, Perhat Khaliq, a renowned Uyghur musician from China, Mukaddas Mijit, a Uyghur traditional dancer, and Indah Walsh, a contemporary Indonesian-American choreographer.

Presented in dialogue with “Rise,” a video Ms. Ross made after traveling in China, the artists will explore the interaction between traditional and contemporary forms of movement and sound as well as internal and external control of one’s body. The program is free, but advance reservations are required.

The center has also announced that a performance by Robert Wilson, its founder and artistic director, of Samuel Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape” will be given at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University from today through Sunday. Tickets can be purchased online at peakperfs.org.

There is a moment early on in “This Wide Night,” a 2008 play by Chloe Moss, that speaks to the intensity of the performances in the current production at East Hampton’s Guild Hall: Lorraine, a woman recently released from prison, is asked by Marie, another former inmate with whom she has been temporarily staying, to leave her flat. Lorraine desperately needs Marie — they both need each other, in fact, though Marie can’t yet see this. So Marie, discreetly, asks her to go, and Lorraine, reluctantly, gets the hint.

Seating for the production of “This Wide Night” is unusual; the audience sits in roughly 70 chairs placed directly on the stage. You can literally reach out and touch the actors. I chose an odd seat, on the far left wing of the stage, but from this vantage I could see Lorraine’s exit. She’s mostly hiding her pain as she leaves, but once she’s out the door there is a final stab of terrible sorrow etched on her face. What was fascinating was that this moment was invisible to the audience, except, by accident, to me. Lorraine is into the hall and gone, the scene is over, and yet the actress is still going, still working, or too lost in the moment to care whether we can see her or not.

Chloe Dirksen, who plays Lorraine, is also the producer along with Jessica Mortellaro, who plays Marie. You may wonder why, in off-season East Hampton, anyone would submit herself to the difficult task of putting on a play about two female ex-cons. The answer turns out to be an easy one: “This Wide Night” is a tour de force for actresses. The play had a run in New York in 2010, garnering rave reviews for Edie Falco and Alison Pill.  I did not see that production, but I will say that this current run is as about as good as regional theater acting gets. 

The setting is a tiny flat in a sketchy part of London, where Marie (an excellent Ms. Mortellaro) is in the midst of her new life as an ex-convict. Jon Raynor’s set design is purposely decrepit; there’s not much more to the room than an old chair, a futon, and a beat-up television with no working sound. Marie has traded one cell for another. Her down time consists of eating junk food, drinking beer, and staring at the soundless television images. At night she works, though at a different job than we are initially led to believe. Her loneliness seems self-imposed, as if she’s not quite ready for the complications of friendship or love. And yet Lorraine, her old cellmate, has come knocking.

 Ms. Mortellaro does a terrific job with Marie, portraying her with a kind of rough-hewn grace that requires a tricky balance. Play Marie too tough and she has no chance to open up later on; play her too sympathetic and her early resistance to Lorraine makes no sense. Ms. Mortellaro finds the middle ground between distance and empathy, while nailing the foul-mouthed humor and poetry of Ms. Moss’s script.

But there’s no doubting that Ms. Dirksen has the plum role. Unlike Marie, Lorraine is more overt about her need for companionship, and this gives the actress the lion’s share of the play’s pathos. From the second she arrives at Marie’s flat, it’s clear that Lorraine has no idea how to function in free society — she may as well have arrived from Pluto — and Ms. Dirksen perfectly captures her barely concealed terror. After 12 years in lock-up, life with a cellmate is all that Lorraine knows, and the performance allows us to see how desperate she is to recreate that scenario in Marie’s Lilliputian flat.

Later there is the revelation that Lorraine is a mother, hoping to reconnect with her son. When this connection does not go as planned, the play reaches its climax. Ms. Dirksen wrests every drop of emotion from the scene, though without a hint of mawkishness or sentimentality. And it’s a tribute to both performers that many in the audience appeared on the brink of losing their composure. (All right, that was me.)

Generally, Felix Bird’s music is interjected with tasteful discretion, though there is a moment or two when you wonder if you’re being nudged to feel something you are already feeling. Otherwise there’s no arguing with Joe Minutillo’s direction, which seems nuanced in every detail, including the actresses’ fine-tuned English accents. 

After the opening night performance, for example, I was discussing the show at a bar across the street with a woman who said Ms. Dirksen was her neighbor. It became clear that I was assuming the actress was British.    

“No, she lives here,” the woman admonished. “She’s Canadian.”

 “This Wide Night” will run at Guild Hall through Saturday. It is not, of course, an easy sell. It is a play of difficult emotions, and a fair amount of pain; your wintry Hamptons complacency may be momentarily shaken. The payoff, however — emotional catharsis and powerful performances — will be well worth it.

An earlier version of this review credited only Chloe Dirksen as the producer of the play. It has been modified to reflect that Jessica Mortellaro is her co-producer.

The Watermill Center will present an art exhibition, two open rehearsals, and tours of the building and grounds this weekend, beginning tomorrow at 1 p.m. with a screening at Francesca Fini’s “Ofelia No Anneka  (Ophelia Did Not Drown)” and followed by an open rehearsal of “La Masca,” a mixed-media installation. Ms. Fini is a current resident at the center.

On Saturday, tours of the center will take place between 1 and 2:30 p.m., with the opening of “Post,” an exhibition by Basco Vazko, set for 3 to 5, and a rehearsal by Alan Lucien Oyen from 5 to 7.

For “La Masca,” Ms. Fini, who lives in Rome, will exhibit original masks inspired by “Fair and Lost,” a performance she presented at the center in July 2014. An interdisciplinary artist working with new media and performance art, she mainly focuses her work on the body and its narrative power. Addressing social and political issues, her projects mix generative audio, lo-fi technologies, and live video, along with handcrafted masks, costumes, and steampunk props.

A Chilean artist, Mr. Vazko is one of three recipients of the 2016 Inga Maren Otto Fellowships, which the center awards to emerging and mid-career artists who have demonstrated exceptional creative ability. His exhibition, “Post,” which will be on view through June 17, includes an artist’s newspaper created by altering pages of The New York Post by painting, collaging, and transforming them in other ways to change the original contents’ appearance or meaning.

Ms. Vazko began painting in the streets of Santiago in the late 1990s and developed a unique style that attracted public attention. The exhibition will include an indoor mural installation executed directly on interior walls throughout the center. In addition, each page from “Post” will be reproduced as a limited edition of prints, which will be distributed free to exhibition visitors. The show was organized by Noah Khoshbin, the center’s curator, and Daneyal Mahmood, its auction manager.

Mr. Oyen is a Norwegian writer, director, and choreographer whose work will be performed by an international touring company he formed in 2006, winter guests. Winter guests tells stories of the contemporary world with words, video, music, and movement. The works are often based on real-life experiences, including original texts, transcribed recordings, and improvisations, into which performers often insert their own reality. In addition to his work for winter guests, Mr. Oyen creates commissioned pieces for other companies in Norway and around the world.

The tour, exhibition, and rehearsals are free, but advance reservations, which can be made on the center’s website, are required.

The John Drew Theater Lab at Guild Hall will present a free staged reading of “I Married the Icepick Killer,” a new play by Carol Muske-Dukes, tomorrow at 7:30 p.m.

Ms. Muske-Dukes, a novelist, essayist, former poet laureate of California, and former part-time Springs resident, has called the play a “tragi/com.” In a piece published in The New York Times Magazine in March 2000, months before her husband, David Dukes, an actor, died of a heart attack, she compared being married to an actor to “living with someone who keeps getting kidnapped. And longs to be kidnapped.”

Her look at the constantly disrupted life of an actor’s spouse is part satiric chronicle and part magic realism, as the widow refuses to believe in her husband’s death, seeing it instead as one more opportunity for him to escape and provide inspiration for a poet’s imagination.

Keyes Art Consulting and Mark Borghi Fine Arts will hold a reading and book signing of “Out of Line: The Art of Jules Feiffer” at the gallery’s location on Manhattan’s Upper East Side on Saturday from 3 to 5 p.m. Martha Faye, the book’s author, and Mr. Feiffer, who lives in East Hampton, will be present.

If the complaint that there are not enough meaty roles in the theater for women sounds familiar, it may be because more women are doing something about it, even if they have to take matters into their own hands. Two actresses felt so strongly about appearing in “This Wide Night,” a play by the British playwright Chloe Moss, that they decided to produce it as well, and it will be staged at Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater beginning next Thursday.

Last week, in a chilly warehouse space in Riverhead lent to them by the Bay Street Theater, Chloe Dirksen and Jessica Mortellaro rehearsed some scenes from the play, taking apart each piece to think about blocking, moving props on and off an intimate stage, and juggling costume changes.

The play is about two former prison cellmates attempting to make it in the world outside the walls. The audience is never told exactly what they did to land in jail. The play is not a crime procedural, but instead addresses the challenges the two face in trying to re-acclimate themselves in a world hostile to convicted felons. “These are two really interesting characters in a really interesting situation,” Ms. Dirksen said. 

The play takes place five days after the character she plays has been released. Having nowhere else to go, she looks up her old friend, played by Ms. Mortellaro, who has been out for a while.

“The play definitely made us think about and research what the experience is of those who go to jail and their transition coming out of it,” Ms. Dirksen said. The characters face tough challenges “having to start again with nothing: no money, no connections. And, they have a record.” She hopes the play will prompt discussions about how society treats criminals and how that experience shapes them in and out of jail.

Their crimes “are talked about a bit, but not in real detail. This is not ‘Law and Order,’ ” Ms. Dirksen said. “What this is about is two people, their circumstances in the present, and how they are dealing with them. It is also about their need to connect with somebody.”

Ms. Mortellaro, who grew up on Long Island and now lives in New York City, met Ms. Dirksen, a Sag Harbor resident, when both appeared in “The Diary of Anne Frank,” which was presented at Bay Street in 2013. It was where they also first worked with Joe Minutillo, who will direct this play for them. Both women were effusive in their gratitude for his help, which included finding their stage manager, Bethany Sortman, and the lighting and set designers, Jose Santiago and John Raynor. Josh Gladstone, who agreed to stage the play at Guild Hall, and the advertisers in the program, who are providing greatly needed funds for the production, were also singled out for thanks. 

A unique feature added to the play is an original score by Felix Bird —  like Ms. Dirksen, from Sag Harbor and also a parent — who writes scores for films and television. They met on the playground. She said they have been “blown away by the enthusiasm” they have received in every corner in response to their effort.

It has made the hard work of producing — the first time for both women — exciting and fulfilling. “We have had an experience with college shows, “but nothing to this scale.” Both were surprised by just how much work had to be done and how many decisions had to be made.

“It’s an exciting thing for us to be both producing and acting. Being responsible for telling a story feels really good,” even with the added pressure, Ms. Dirksen said.

The play will have a two-week run with performances beginning next Thursday at 7 p.m., Friday, March 18, at 8, March 19 at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., and March 20 at 2 p.m. It continues the following week, on the same days and times, through March 26. Tickets are $28 in advance and $35 cash at the door. Advance purchases can be made through the Brown Paper Tickets website.

After a three-month hiatus, Ille Arts will reopen at a new Amagansett location on Saturday at 171 Main Street with an exhibition of paintings by Fulvio Massi and sculpture by Marianne Weil. A reception will take place on March 19 from 5 to 7 p.m., and the show will remain on view through April 4.

While Sara DeLuca, the owner of Ille Arts, was fond of the gallery’s original location at the end of a driveway at 216a Main Street, she began to look around when she learned her landlord there was planning to sell the building.

A tip from Carlos Lama, who works at Innersleeve Records in Amagansett, led her to Joe and Sal LaCarrubba, who own the Main Street property where their eponymous store, known for work clothes, outdoor wear, shoes, jeans, and other clothing and accessories, was located from 1932, when it opened as a shoe repair shop, until 1997, when they sold the business.

Ms. DeLuca and the landlords shared the cost of renovating the expansive, white space, the floor-to-ceiling windows of which open onto Main Street. She said she will show the same range of contemporary work as at the previous location, but with an addition, a table 6 feet deep and 12 feet long in the rear of the gallery.

“On one side, facing the front, will be art books and ceramics,” she said. “In the back it will have flat files of works on paper that will be indexed and cataloged, with a computer or iPad so visitors can search the contents of the files.” The books and ceramics will be for sale as well as for browsing, and all the works on paper will be priced below $1,000.

“It will be almost like a separate store within the gallery, very simple, with some seating. When there’s just art on the walls, most people give a glance and walk out. If there’s something else to engage them, I think they will be encouraged to stay.”

Mr. Massi and Ms. Weil, like Ms. DeLuca, have strong ties to Italy. An architect as well as a painter, Mr. Massi is from Milan, where he lived and practiced architecture until moving here in 1999 with his wife, Naimy Hackett, an East Hampton native who lived and worked for many years in Milan. His gestural abstract paintings have strong roots in both jazz and architecture.

Ms. Weil, who lives in Orient, was born in New York City but spent more than 12 years in Pietrasanta, Italy, a town on the coast of northern Tuscany known for its foundries, marble studios, and classes taught by master artisans. Her work, which combines blown or poured glass with bronze, uses age-old techniques she learned in Italy.

“You do it for love,” Ms. DeLuca said of running a gallery. “I’ve gotten so much support here. When you love what you do, you can’t go wrong. It’s a great way of being a presence in the community.”

There are tiny cabinets, hand-made with care. Bathtubs are repurposed soap dishes, and hand-cut curtains adorn the windows. Much of the furniture is fashioned by hand, with the exception of chairs — chairs are too time-consuming and tough for her hands to handle, seasoned as those hands may be.

Otherwise, though, Irina Ourusoff builds her dollhouses from scratch.

Ms. Ourusoff is an artist from East Hampton who formerly worked as a translator for the United Nations, but who more recently has been a painter, a sculptor, a maker of hooked rugs and quilts, an art teacher, and more. Even at 79, she keeps looking for new creative outlets. Making dollhouses, she said, combines the skills of an architect with those of an interior decorator: “There’s a beautiful detail behind all the houses.”

Only once did Ms. Ourusoff start with a prefabricated, store-bought dollhouse kit, given to her by a friend as a gift. It was nice, she said, but such a pain to put together that she pledged to herself never to bother with a kit again, and she has kept that promise.

The houses she builds begin as simple wooden boxes. The kitchen, dining room, and living room are usually on the first floor, and a flight of steps leads up to a second floor, where there are probably bedrooms, a bathroom, and maybe a specialty room (set aside for music and musical instruments, perhaps). There may also be a third floor, with another bedroom or playroom for the children.

Ms. Ourusoff has also made miniature townhouses, with rooms stacked one on top of another and built into what were originally skinny curio cabinets. These she somehow manages to make even smaller than the dollhouses. If the others have rooms with 10-inch ceilings, the townhouses have perhaps 8-inch ceilings, with everything inside also created to scale.

There are even two stores to go with the dollhouses: a Christmas toyshop and a store that Ms. Ourusoff calls “Abigail’s Sewing Shop.” The latter has the feel of a country antique store, outfitted with merchandise such as spools of thread (which Ms. Ourusoff wound by hand) and tiny baskets. The store’s proprietor uses a miniature ironing board, spinning wheel, and clothing rack, and has filled shelf upon shelf upon shelf with amazing little odds and ends.

Notable among the dollhouses is a replica of a real house on Division Street in Sag Harbor, the tall green one with the white scalloping that’s on the right-hand side of northbound Route 114. The little copy is as striking as the big original, although its interior is imagined.

In Ms. Ourusoff’s dollhouses, the walls are covered with real wallpaper. The linoleum in the kitchens is actual linoleum. The paintings hanging on the walls are her own original works of art.

“It’s a disaster when I finish one. If you’ve ever done puzzles, you know,” she said. “To me, it’s difficult to finish something and to start brand-new again. When I finish something, I’ve put my whole soul there, and I have to start another one.”

Ms. Ourusoff often constructs things in multiples, for instance building three sofas at once, gluing one piece at a time and moving onto another while the glue on the first one sets. She works with wood, clay, cloth, felt, and more, concurrently building and decorating, because, she said, the process of collecting accessories — things like dishes, lamps, and, yes, the chairs she prefers not to make herself — is very time-consuming.

“You start collecting. Mainly what you start collecting, at garage sales and antiques stores, is anything that is tiny and difficult to find. The smaller, the better. You have to find real things, but tiny,” she said, offering up a doll-sized candlestick and teapot as examples.

Creating and collecting miniatures emerged as an art form and pastime in the 18th century and became popular again in the early 1970s, according to the website of the International Guild of Miniature Artisans. Today, what with the Internet, there is a huge market, with national associations, museums, and conventions for collectors and artists. Listings for dollhouse furnishings, kits, and accessories number a half  million on eBay. But Ms. Ourusoff does not shop on the Internet, instead preferring to find things in person or make them herself.

The artist, who sells her dollhouses for anywhere from $75 to $500 and can create them to a client’s particular specifications, recommended reading “The Mouse Mansion,” by Karina Schaapman, a children’s book that adults interested in miniatures will enjoy as well. With detailed photographic illustrations, it documents an epic maze of a dollhouse, straight out of a fairy tale, built for a colony of mice.

As a child, Ms. Ourusoff never had a dollhouse of her own. Now she has as many as she wants, and “I’m blissfully happy,” she said.

The eighth Classical Students for Katy’s Courage concert will take place on Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor. The benefit will feature classical music students from local schools and local residents home from college who come together to celebrate the life of Katy Stewart, a Sag Harbor resident who succumbed to liver cancer at the age of 12.

The program will include Mozart’s String Quartet in F Major, “The Hunt,” performed by the Southampton High School students Kivian King, Caleigh Kiembock, Sebastian Pereira, and Julia Kepcyznska; Saint Saens’s “Havanaise” by Benjamin Pereira of Southampton, who attends John Hopkins/Peabody Institute; Brahms’s Piano Trio, No. 1, Op. 8, by Christopher Beroes-Haigis of Sag Harbor, a student at Bard College, and Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2, by Matthew Maimone, a Juilliard student from Sag Harbor.

Other participating musicians are Christopher Ritter, Ariana Moustakas, and Justin Gardiner from Pierson High School and Luke Baron from the Springs School. Ellen Johansen, Jackson McKinnon, Joseph Hauer, and Aglaia Savalas Messina will accompany the performers.

The suggested $20 donation will benefit Katy’s Courage, which is dedicated to education, children’s bereavement support, and pediatric cancer research.

The John Drew Theater Lab will present “Andromeda,” a free performance of a work-in-progress by Kate Mueth and the Neo-Political Cowgirls, on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. 

In the Greek myth, Andromeda was a beautiful princess whose mother’s pride led Poseidon to send a sea monster to destroy the Queen’s kingdom. Her parents chained Andromeda to a rock as a sacrifice to the monster, but Perseus saved her.

Ms. Mueth and the Cowgirls, a women’s dance-theater company she founded, engage the ancient myth, focusing on Andromeda’s thoughts as she is left for dead, and deconstruct it for examination from a modern viewpoint.