The Southampton Cultural Center will take a different approach to theater with its presentation of “The Fantasticks,” which will open next Thursday at 7:30 p.m. and continue for three weekends.

The 1960 musical, with music by Harvey Schmidt and lyrics by Tom Jones, tells an allegorical story of two fathers who, knowing that children will always do what their parents forbid, erect a wall between their houses to ensure their children fall in love. The longest-running musical in history, with more than 17,000 performances before closing in 2002, the play draws elements from “Pyramus and Thisbe,” “Romeo and Juliet,” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

Michael Disher will direct and choreograph with David Hoffman. The cast includes Daniel Becker, Adam Fronc, Ella Watts, Frances Sherman, Richard Adler, Philip Reichert, Stephan Scheck, and Mr. Hoffman. Dustin Schepps and Thomas Wheeler are also featured.

Thursday performances will be at 7:30, Fridays and Saturdays at 8, and Sunday matinees will take place at 2:30. Tickets are $25, $12 for students, and can be purchased at the center’s website.

Kenny Mann, a Sag Harbor filmmaker whose feature “Beautiful Tree, Severed Roots” was shown at the Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival in 2013, has written and produced “The Mtepe Shungwaya Sails Again: A Tribute to the Boat-Builders of Lamu,” a new 13-minute documentary that will be shown at the Maritime Museum of San Diego on Friday, Oct. 2.

The mtepe was a type of boat that plied the East African coast for centuries. One was last seen in 1935. Constructed without nails, the boats were 100 feet long and 24 feet wide, with long arching prows. Ms. Mann’s film documents the construction and launch of a half-sized model overseen by Abdul Shariff of the Zanzibar Museum of Antiquities. The filmmaker undertook the project when she was in Zanzibar in July for the screening of “Beautiful Tree, Severed Roots” at the Zanzibar International Film Festival.

Another film from the 2013 documentary festival, “The Only Real Game,” directed by Mirra Bank of East Hampton, is now available for download from iTunes, Amazon.com, and the film’s website. “The Only Real Game” is about the importance of baseball to the people of Manipur, a remote and troubled corner of India beset by civil wars, martial law, drugs, and H.I.V./AIDS. It follows Major League Baseball Envoy Program coaches who travel there to help the residents develop their skills.

The Choral Society of the Hamptons will hold auditions for its next concert on Monday, by appointment, at the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church. Rehearsals are usually held on Mondays from 7:30 to 10 p.m.

The concert will take place on Dec. 6 and will feature Ottorino Respighi’s “Laud to the Nativity” and other festive works, in two performances. More information is available at the choral society’s website or by calling 204-9402.

The LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton will honor Dan Hinkley and Elizabeth Scholtz at its annual Landscape Awards Luncheon on Saturday. The day’s events will begin at 10:30 a.m. at Hoie Hall of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in East Hampton Village, where Mr. Hinkley, a horticulturalist, garden writer, and nurseryman, will give a lecture titled “In Search of Good Plants.” He will be introduced by Martha Stewart.

The gardens at LongHouse will open at 11:30 a.m., lunch will follow at noon, and the awards presentation will take place at 1 p.m. Ms. Scholtz, who was a director of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, its first vice president, and is now director emeritus, will receive the Garden Leadership award from Scot Medbury, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s president. Jamaica Kincaid, a novelist, gardener, and garden writer, will present Mr. Hinkley with the LongHouse Landscape award.

Tickets, which can be purchased at the LongHouse website, start at $250. Tickets to the Hoie Hall lecture only are priced at $75, $50 for members.

“Instruments of the People,” a free concert by Francisco Roldan, a classical guitarist, and Danny Mallon, a percussionist, will take place at the Montauk Library on Sunday afternoon at 3:30. The program will include works by composers from Spain, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Colombia, and the United States.

The Rising Stars Piano Series will return to the Southampton Cultural Center for its 13th season with a two-piano program featuring Natalia Lavrova and Vassily Primakov on Saturday at 7 p.m. Both artists began their studies in Moscow before moving to New York City to attend the Juilliard School. Since joining forces in 2010 they have performed throughout the United States. The cultural center program will include works by Scriabin, Rachmaninov, and Tchaikovsky. Tickets are $20, free for students under 21.

A benefit reception and auction for the East End Special Players will be held Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. at the home of Marie-Eve and Michel Berty at 44 Sayre’s Path in Wainscott. The Players, a group of actors with developmental challenges under the artistic direction of Jacqui Leader, have been performing for 25 years.

Guests at the reception can tour the modernist house, designed by Alfredo De Vido and Maziar Behrooz, take in the art collection, wander in the gardens, and enjoy a performance of vignettes from the troupe’s upcoming production. In addition, a film featuring the Players’ 2014 New York City appearance will be shown in the private screening room. Tickets cost $75 and can be purchased at the group’s website.

This summer, Taylor Rose Berry finally finished “White Noise” by Don DeLillo. While not earth-shattering news to most, it will be of interest to her friends, patrons, and those who attended the PechaKucha night at the Parrish Art Museum in June. During her talk that evening, Ms. Berry detailed her struggles with that book and how it led to her first and only failing grade on a term paper.

She has always loved books, she said more recently at Harbor Books, her store in Sag Harbor. “There’s some great pictures of me as a kid on the couch with my mom and my dad on each side of me, all reading.”

But she is also a procrastinator, in the habit of waiting until the last minute to do most anything. “It worked for me my entire life except for this time,” as a freshman in Philip Baruth’s postmodern literature class at the University of Vermont. “I got by really well, because I was a reader. I would say, ‘I’m not coming to class,’ because if they were only teaching the text book, I would just read it.”

She began the paper the day before it was due, still expecting to receive a good grade. When she got it back, “it looked like a crime scene.” She spent 20 minutes after class trying to talk him out of his red-inked observations such as “you use fillers for a lack of knowledge” and “your comprehension of the English language is juvenile at best,” but to no avail.

Years later, she ran into him and they revisited that discussion. “He told me he failed me because he knew I could do better. He didn’t think anyone else had told me that, and he thought it was his job to do so.”

“And I told him it was absolutely not his job, but here I am all these years later still talking about it” and finally reading the book a few weeks after the Parrish talk. She said she liked some of Mr. DeLillo’s other books better, but none of them are on her favorites list. “I can see why it’s considered a masterpiece,” but for her, given all she had been through, it was more like homework. She said she preferred James Tadd Adcox’s “Does Not Love,” a novel that borrows from DeLillo and was published last year, as something more approachable. “I loved it so much more.”

After a long passage in “White Noise” where a character runs the stadium stairs, “I thought, ‘Why did I just read that?’ ” It reminded her “of Steinbeck’s turtle crossing a road for 10 pages” in “The Grapes of Wrath,” which she had to read in high school. “I thought, ‘This is ridiculous.’ A lot of writers you read in school do that to you.”

“I read ‘Gone With the Wind’ in seventh grade. It is still one of my favorite books. After that, my mother wanted me to read ‘Anna Karenina’ and then ‘Dr. Zhivago,’ which was not the right jump,” she said. “Now I love them, but those books didn’t mean anything to me when I first read them. I just read them to finish, which is not the way anyone should read.”

To help her organize the children’s section at Harbor Books, she consulted Diane Frankenstein, an expert on children’s and adult literacy who seeks to instill love of reading in all ages. Her selection was “really thoughtful, not just the darlings you see everywhere. It’s things you haven’t seen in 15 years, or new things that are extraordinary.”

It’s important to her that the children she serves learn to love books — the objects themselves and the content within — as much as she does. For her, digital interface is a poor substitute. She understands the convenience of e-books and offers them on her website, but she prefers the feel of turning pages, the look of the printed word.

Her mother flew out to California for a recent two-week vacation with 20 titles of books loaded into her iPad. In contrast, when she went on a road trip from Seattle to San Diego, one of the early stops was Powell’s Books (Portland’s version of the Strand in New York City, but even larger). “I was like a kid in a candy store and had to buy a new piece of luggage just for the books I bought,” paying an extra $100 to fly them back home with her.

“The millennial generation has an odd reverence for nostalgia.” When she found her mother’s old vinyl records, she took them over to her grandfather’s house so he could show her how to play them on his stereo. “Now vinyl is everywhere. We were the generation that brought it back.”

The day she received her failed paper, she went to the Crow Bookshop in Burlington to decompress. As he was known to do, Mr. Crow walked over and handed her a book. “He always picked the book that was right book for you at that very moment. Whether you loved it or hated it, there would be something in it that spoke to you,” she said. He gave her “White Noise.”

In that moment she said she knew she wanted “to make people feel the way I did when he handed me that book.” Mr. Crow “had a magic touch. Someday I hope to have that skill. He gave me some of my favorite books in the entire world.”

Nine years later, she has made that dream come true in a storefront at the north end of Sag Harbor’s Main Street with wide paned windows and window seats, and lots of dark wood and finishes mingled with pops of color: red-shaded goose neck and overhead lamps, mini beanbag chairs in the children’s section, and wide cozy leather chairs in the center of the room.

Seated under a large black-and-white photo of Ernest Hemingway, one of her heroes, she says she doesn’t believe in finishing books she hates. When she does, though, she always finds something redeeming, “even if it’s just a line” or what Hemingway might call “one true sentence.”

At 14, she read Jill A. Davis’s “Girls’ Poker Night.” The first line was “ ‘Happy endings aren’t for cowards.’ Then, the book itself meant nothing to me, but 15 years later that line still sticks. When you read a book, something can change you or imprint on you that might come back.”

Ms. Berry will put “The Tender Bar” by J.R. Moehringer in anyone’s hands who asks her for a recommendation. At the Parrish talk, she shared a passage describing why the bar of his title was his community’s “safe place” and concluded with this: “We went there for love, for sex, for trouble, or someone who had gone missing, because sooner or later everyone turned up there. Most of all we went there when we needed to be found.” It’s what she wants for her store, and why she imbued it with a “dark and cozy Old English” ambiance.

“You will never hear me tell somebody to put down a coffee, an ice cream, or a bottle of wine, or whatever their heart fancies.” Further, it’s perfectly fine to come in, pick up a book, “and read the whole damn book for all I care. To me it’s an investment. If you come in and enjoy your time here, you’ll remember my store when there’s a book you need.”

Mr. Crow “didn’t expect you to pay for things ever. His philosophy was that you could pay what you had, you could bring it back when you were done, or you could pay it forward.” Tearing up, she said, “I will always remember the books he gave me, and it wasn’t because I did or didn’t have the money, it was that he thought it was important enough to share them.”

Open House at Watermill Center

The Watermill Center will hold its fall open house on Saturday, starting at noon with a tour of the building, grounds, and collection and followed at 2 with a public rehearsal of Oliver Beer’s “The Resonance Project” and the opening of G.T. Pellizzi’s exhibition “Visitations.” The day will conclude with an outdoor reception.

Mr. Beer, a Watermill resident artist, is interested in the relationship between sound and space. “The Resonance Project” consists of films, sound pieces, and performances that use the human voice to make architectural spaces resound at their full frequencies. The artist has worked in a variety of contexts, including the Victorian sewers of England and the skyline tunnels of the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

For “Visitations,” Mr. Pellizzi, who lives in Mexico and New York City, will present paintings, sculpture, and installations, in a dialogue with the Watermill Center’s collection. He will give a gallery talk at 3 p.m.

Saturday’s programs are free. Reservations are required, and can be made at the center’s website.

Rafael Ferrer at Ille Arts

“Reflections,” an exhibition of works on paper by Rafael Ferrer, will open Saturday at Ille Arts in Amagansett with a reception from 5 to 7 p.m. and remain on view through Oct. 12.

The works in the show were made between 2000 and 2010, which is said to have been a time of reflection for the artist after he bought a house in Greenport and sold his place in New York City. 

Mr. Ferrer, who was born in San Juan, P.R., achieved success in the late 1960s with a series of installations engaging process and conceptual art that were shown at museums worldwide. He subsequently moved away from that early work, and by the 1980s was creating paintings described by Roberta Smith of The New York Times as “visually and emotionally fraught . . . depicting radiant, shadow-pocked scenes of makeshift tropical dwellings and their inhabitants.”

Color at Harper’s Books

“Color Photographs,” Daisuke Yokota’s first solo exhibition in the United States, will open Saturday at Harper’s Books in East Hampton and continue through Dec. 1. A reception for the artist will be held Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.

Mr. Yokota is a highly regarded photographer from Tokyo who, though only in his early 30s, has shown internationally. His work engages the various processes of photography and has manifested itself in the repeated re-photographing of images, the application of chemicals to them, and live book “performances.”

For “Color Photographs,” he “tried not to take pictures,” according to the gallery, instead layering sheets of unused, large-format color film and applying unorthodox developing techniques before scanning the results, which “show that the essence of photography rests not necessarily with the camera, but in film itself.”

Abstraction at Ashawagh

“Mostly Abstract,” a group exhibition, will be held Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday from 11 to 4 at Ashawagh Hall in Springs, with a reception set for Saturday from 5 to 7.

The artists, who work in a wide variety of mediums, are linked by a visceral and emotional affinity with the tradition of Abstract Expressionism. They are Casey Chalem Anderson, Beth Barry, Barbara Bilotta, Anahi DeCanio, Katherine Hammond, Bo Parsons, Sheila Rotner, Cynthia Sobel, Lieve Thiers, and Mark E. Zimmerman.

Walter Weissman Interview

Walter Weissman, an artist and photographer from East Hampton, will be interviewed about his work tonight at 6:30 at the Tenri Gallery and Cultural Center in Manhattan as part of its Artists Talk on Art series. Chris Byrne, a curator, Eunice Golden, an artist, and Doug Sheer, chairman of the series, will conduct the interview. The doors will open at 6, and tickets are $8, $5 for students and senior citizens.

“Portraying Artists: Photographs by Walter Weissman” will open Oct. 24 at Guild Hall in East Hampton and run through Jan. 3.

New at Marcelle Project

“Inner Circles,” an exhibition of paintings by Anna Jurinich, a Croatian-born artist who lives in Wading River, will open at Peter Marcelle Project in Southampton with a reception Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. and remain on view through Oct. 11.

Ms. Jurinich’s paintings explore the human condition, whether that of the world at large or her personal and family life. She cites Munch, Durer, and Blake as artists she feels a kinship with; Munch for his psychological undertones, Durer for his feeling for detail, and Blake for his spirituality.

“Audrey Flack: Heroines”

The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, N.Y., will show “Audrey Flack: Heroines,” drawings and prints highlighting women neglected or demonized by history, from Saturday through Jan. 3. Ms. Flack, a pioneer in Photorealism who has been exhibiting for six decades, has work in the collections of major museums throughout the world. She lives in New York City and East Hampton.

Shinnecock to Montauk

The Romany Kramoris Gallery in Sag Harbor will present “Shinnecock to Montauk,” an exhibition of artwork by Franklin Engel, today through Oct. 15. Receptions will be held Saturday from 5 to 6:30 p.m. and on Oct. 3, also 5 to 6:30.

Mr. Engel, who was born and raised in New York City and is a life member of the Art Students League, has said that his first visit to the East End brought a new creative energy to his work. His paintings of the people and landscapes of the region are infused with a Fauvist expressionism and have been shown at many galleries in the city.