Christine Sciulli, the first artist in residence at the South Fork Natural History Museum on the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike in Bridgehampton, will collaborate with Jaanika Peerna, an artist and performer, and David Rothenberg, a composer, for a multimedia concert and performance on Saturday based on Ms. Sciulli’s installation “The Expansive Field.”

    Ms. Sciulli is a projection and installation artist. Saturday’s event will take place at the museum’s grounds and in its barn studio from 6 to 9 p.m. Light refreshments will be served.

    Ms. Sciulli and Ms. Peerna, who share a love of drawing and the ephemeral, will collaborate within Ms. Sciulli’s installation to create a live-action light drawing. Ms. Peerna is known for her collaborative live performances using sound, dance, and drawing. For this performance, she will be interacting with Ms. Sciulli’s projected planes of light using movement and materials.

     Mr. Rothenberg, who is releasing a book and CD titled “Bug Music,” will explore the preserve’s native species through an acoustic concert based on insect and bird sounds. A signing, sponsored by Canio’s Books, of “Bug Music,” as well as his books “Why Birds Sing” and “Survival of the Beautiful,” will follow.

   The Southampton Cultural Center will present a dance recital by Steps Repertory Ensemble on Saturday at 7 p.m. at the center’s Levitas Center for the Arts. Under the guidance of Claire Livingstone, the artistic director and a former dancer with the Royal Ballet, the ensemble has grown to a company of 10 to 12 professional dancers.

    Saturday’s performance will include the world premiere of Shannon Gillen’s “On Certainty,” set to music by Frank Bretschneider and Ryoji Ikeda; an excerpt from Zvi Gotheiner’s “Chairs,” a work for nine dancers set to a collage of music ranging from Rachmaninoff to Russian Orthodox liturgical to movie music; “Knead,” by Benoit-Swan Pouffer, exploring the dynamic of friendship and trust, and an encore performance of Nathan Trice’s “Conversations” on the subject of love, set to music by Keith Jarrett.

    Tickets, at $20 or $10 for students under 21 with I.D., are available in advance at scc-arts.org or at the door 40 minutes before the performance.

   Three couples, an indiscretion, a cover-up, accusations, and crumbling alibis on overlapping sets lead to confusion and comedy in the Hampton Theatre Company’s revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s “How the Other Half Loves,” opening today for a three-week run at Quogue Community Hall.

    The production of “How the Other Half Loves” features the living rooms of two of the three couples overlapping on the same set and sharing a common dining table. The shared table allowed the playwright to have two different, disastrous dinner parties on two different evenings play out simultaneously in the same scene.

    Diana Marbury, HTC’s artistic director who played the role of Fiona Foster in the 1992 production, directs a cast of six, made up of three HTC regulars and three newcomers to the company.

    Showtimes are Thursdays at 7 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. Tickets cost $25, $23 for those 65 or over, and $10 for students under 21 and are available at hamptontheatre.org or by calling OvationTix. The company will offer dinner theater packages in collaboration with the Southampton, Westhampton Beach, Hampton Bays, and Quogue libraries

   The sounds of summer begin tomorrow at 6 p.m. with the return of D.J. Blind Prophet to the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill. The public is invited to enjoy food and beverages, along with music, on the terrace. The event is free with museum admission.

    Blind Prophet is Joseph Burns, a native Long Islander. After his first release, on the Car Crash Set label out of Seattle in 2010, his music has appeared on other labels including L2S Recordings, Gradient Audio, DubKraft, and Haunted Audio. He has performed in the United States, Canada, and Europe. Reservations are suggested.

   Arthur Pinajian’s life and legacy combine to form one of those stories that should be made into a book or movie, and it was. Yet, it wasn’t about him specifically. Kurt Vonnegut’s novel “Bluebeard: The Autobiography of Rabo Karabekian” is about an eccentric Armenian-American painter who knew all the big boys of Abstract Expressionism but chose to paint his own art in obscurity and died unknown. This is also Pinajian’s story in brief, and the similarities in “Bluebeard” continue, but you get the idea.

    A sampling of the Bellport artist’s midcentury-style abstractions and later landscapes are now on view at Lawrence Fine Arts in East Hampton. His work has been likened to that of other East End artists such as Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, and Adolph Gottlieb.

    Pinajian worked six months of the year in his sister’s cottage in Bellport, and Vonnegut spent much of his time in Sagaponack, but there is no record of the artist and writer having known each other, or of Vonnegut having been aware of the artist by reputation or through other connections. Like “Bluebeard,” Pinajian’s art was finally “discovered,” found by two house flippers hoping to make the most of the real estate boom in 2006.

    Thomas V. Schultz and Lawrence E. Joseph were struck by the artist’s work, some 7,000 pieces, that remained piled up in the garage he had used as a studio. They bought the house and through various connections they brought in art historians to take a look over a period of months. The experts liked what they saw.

    Pinajian, who died in 1999, and whose sister is also dead, left instructions that his entire oeuvre be destroyed. On at least two occasions, it almost was. Howard Shapiro, the owner of Lawrence Fine Arts, said in his gallery on May 12 that each time, those in charge of the estate thought better of it and returned the paintings, drawings, sketchbooks, and journals to the garage.

    Mr. Schultz was the first potential buyer to see the cottage and studio, one of the smallest houses in the area at a scant 625 square feet. “The house also had works that were stored in the attics and in various rooms,” he said. Mr. Schultz had taken art history classes in college and found himself responding to the pieces.

    By that point he had decided to buy the house, “and I concluded that I was not going to be the one who put someone’s life’s work into a Dumpster. I called my business partner and told him I wanted to save it and he supported me, but we did not know where it was going to take us,” Mr. Schultz said by phone on May 14.

    After they brought in the experts, including the late William Innes Homer, who was professor emeritus at the University of Delaware, where he had previously been chairman of the art department, and Peter Hastings Falk, an arts reference book publisher and appraiser, they began conserving the work and separating it into periods: midcentury-style abstractions, landscapes, and a series of erotic nudes. They set about putting together a catalog and showing pieces in various venues around the country, including two shows in New York City — one in SoHo and another this spring at the Fuller Building in Midtown.

    Mr. Shapiro was approached to have a show because of his gallery’s location on the East End. “I was hesitant, because who needs to show another unknown artist? Every gallery has the underrated unknown artist with untold stories,” he said. “It’s a little trite, but I said yes with some trepidation.”

    What sold him was the quality of the works and their freshness to the marketplace. “Everyone wants a masterpiece from that period, but all of the good things are already in museums. If all you can get is a C-plus Gorky, why not buy an A-plus Pinajian?”

    While most of his best art is still available, not everything in the large collection is of the highest quality. At Pinajian’s best, his abstract works show a dynamic line and a Cubist shard-like style that was rejected by many in the period who were trying to shake off European traditions from earlier decades. Judging from the works in the catalog, it appears that Pinajian tried on painting styles like cardigans, but his use of color and line is unique, even when echoing others of his period.

    Mr. Shapiro said the Fuller Building show “was going nowhere until The New York Times got a hold of the story.” The article, by James Barron and published in March of this year, caused the story of the artist and his work to take off “like a rocket ship, and now it has a momentum of its own.” Collectors have since flown in and major museums are said to be interested, although none have finalized purchases yet. Mr. Shapiro said he took three works to an art fair in Chicago and all of them sold, and fast.

    According to Mr. Schultz, who is managing the collection, they plan to sell a small portion of the works to help defray costs but would like to find a collector who is interested in the whole archive, which includes the artwork as well as the journals and Pinajian’s early work as a commercial illustrator for comic books and other projects. Estimates of the value of the group in its entirety range anywhere from $30 million to $150 million, depending on who is doing the estimating.

    The team that put together the Pinajian shows and catalog have also formed a group called Rediscovered Masters to help other artists’ estates and late-career artists gain recognition, showings, and sales. Three East Hampton artists are currently listed on the group’s Web site: Dan Christensen, who died in 2007, and Connie Fox and William King, a married couple who show regularly on the South Fork and in New York City.

    With so many artists of the midcentury years having passed away in obscurity on the national and international scenes after having been linked with the best and the brightest during their early careers, it would seem some lessons could be drawn from Pinajian’s experience. Perhaps collectors will consider buying some of the A-plus work that might still be moldering in garages out here if it is presented in the right way.

    Mr. Shapiro wasn’t sure, but said he hoped so. “There is a certain romance in this particular story, the artist who never showed and wanted his work destroyed. People respond to it, and then they respond to the work.”

   On a searingly bright but breezy mid-spring day, Melville (Mickey) Straus stood on his patio wearing a purple sweater over a plaid shirt and cords with a conspiratorial twinkle in his eye. “My wife will be angry that I suggested we sit out here in the cold, but I just love being outside,” he said, grinning as he offered a warming cup of coffee. He seemed to appreciate that the panoramic view from the patio, overlooking his pool, Hook Pond, and the late afternoon golfers at the Maidstone Club, was worth a little chill in the air.

    After a two-decade tenure on Guild Hall’s board and 18 years as its chairman, Mr. Straus announced his retirement in March at a star-studded event where he was given a lifetime achievement award and lauded by leaders in the arts, business, and academia, both in the room and in taped messages. This year’s event can be seen in its entirety on LTV’s Web site, or on the Guild Hall Web site in an excerpt featuring Mr. Straus’s tribute.

    He joined Guild Hall’s board in 1992 and became chairman three years later. The founder and chief programmer of the cultural center’s Hamptons Institute, he led Guild Hall’s $14 million capital campaign for the renovation of its building and grounds, which was completed in 2009. Over the years he has served as a director of many other arts-related institutions as well.

    Always an energetic presence at any event, Mr. Straus decided to curtail his activities after being diagnosed and treated for a brain tumor last September. The effect on his speech and facial expressions is noticeable, but his mental acuity and physical vigor have not suffered. The tumor has shrunk and he has had six months of clean follow-up tests. “I had no reaction to chemo and have been really pleased with the results,” he said. He still works out every day and keeps up with his wife, Leila, on her regular excursions to exotic destinations, including a recent trip to Laos and Burma.

    Mr. Straus has come a long way from Tucson, where he grew up. When he was in high school in the 1950s, his father gave him 50 shares of stock in Montgomery Ward and he eagerly followed the drama of a proxy fight soon after. “It got me interested in the stock market and interested in finance.”

    After a pivotal decision to follow a friend east to study at Dartmouth College, he went on to earn an M.B.A. at Harvard Business School, where he took to leveraged buyouts (“It was still so early in the game, we didn’t know what to call it”). His first job, in 1967, was as an analyst with Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette.

    He stayed in research for a time, but “I was most intrigued by the market itself, so I moved to money management.” In an association that lasted more than two decades, he managed more than $1.5 billion for Weiss, Peck & Greer, before forming his own firm in 1998.

    “The great thing about finance and the stock market is, every day you have to react to something new that has happened and is relevant to what you are doing. There are always new parameters. After 40 years, I still love it,” said Mr. Straus. “I’m never bored.”

    His work can be all-consuming, but as he became more successful he found time for other interests. The board of the American Ballet Theatre, when Mikhail Baryshnikov was its artistic director in the 1980s, came first, followed by the Contemporary Arts Council of the Museum of Modern Art, Independent Curators Inc., and American Friends of the Royal Ballet School. He is very active at Dartmouth, having served on several boards and committees and as a past chairman of the board of the school’s Hopkins Center/Hood Museum.

    Mr. Straus bought his art-filled house 25 years ago, having rented here for a decade prior. He’d never planned to take an active role in East Hampton’s cultural community, he said. “When we came out here, I vowed not to get involved, because I was so involved in the city. Then I started going to both art and performance shows at Guild Hall.” In 1981, he hosted a dinner for the opening of a de Kooning exhibition and met the artist. Before he knew it, he was hooked.

    In addition to bringing the capital campaign to within $200,000 of its goal and establishing an endowment in his name that has raised more than $1 million, Mr. Straus was instrumental in helping Ruth Appelhof, Guild Hall’s director, to broaden year-round community participation in the institution as artists, performers, and audience. He is an active supporter of the clothesline art fair in the summer, with a wall in his house devoted to South Fork seascapes by local artists.

    Mr. Straus takes pardonable pride in his role in the creation and continued programming of the Hamptons Institute, a series of panel discussions on challenges facing the region and the world that attracts some of the most accomplished figures in their fields. At the first event, in 2010, Joe Nocera of The New York Times moderated a panel of George Soros, Elizabeth Warren, and Michael Greenberger on financial-reform proposals; the event attracted news coverage from all over the world. The institute’s annual summer conferences, held in conjunction with the Roosevelt Institute in New York City, also cover topics in the arts, sciences, and social sciences. If the series became known as a “junior Aspen Institute, that would be my ideal,” said its founder.

    Asked to name his most memorable John Drew Theater experiences, Mr. Straus said a benefit concert by Billy Joel in the late ’90s “definitely blew me away.” More recently, Steve Martin’s performance with his band, the Steep Canyon Rangers, was a highlight. Mr. Straus pretty much attends everything he can: art shows, summer documentary screenings, plays, readings, talks, and the popular Saturday-afternoon Metropolitan Opera simulcasts.

    He praised the Guild Hall staff for all their efforts and singled out a fellow board member, Alec Baldwin, who has taken an active role in the activities of the cultural center. At the March dinner, Mr. Baldwin gave Mr. Straus his own tribute. “Alec’s introduction could have been pro forma, but it was very personal,” he said. “He made the effort, as always, and I think the world of him.”

    Mr. Straus’s goal in 2006, when the capital campaign got under way, was to help Guild Hall complete it and move on. Then came the recession.

    “It took another seven to eight years to complete. We raised a decent amount of money — maybe not by New York City standards — but we were able to complete the project we wanted to do. The village put a damper on a bigger project, but that was the best thing that happened to us, in a way. We kept the thread of Guild Hall, preserved what it was, and then modernized it. I think it turned out really well.”

    AcquAria, a duo composed of Michela Musolino, vocalist, and Vincenzo Castellana, drums, will give a free concert, “Sempri amMari (Always the Sea) — Folk Songs of Sicily,” on Sunday from 3:30 to 5 p.m. in the Suzanne Koch Gosman Room at the Montauk Library.

    The two promise a dynamic program of music dedicated to the sea, including maritime songs, fishermen’s chanteys, legends, and love songs that illustrate the bond between Sicily’s people and the sea that surrounds their island. The performance will be in Sicilian and include a discussion in English.

   Bruce Wolosoff, a composer and pianist who lives on Shelter Island, will give a benefit recital for the German Diez Scholarship Fund at the Renee Weiler Concert Hall of the Greenwich House Music School at 46 Barrow Street in Manhattan tonight at 8. Tickets cost $20 and are available at the door. Additional donations have been requested.

Expressionism Part II

    The Pollock-Krasner House in Springs will have a discussion called “Expressionism in the 21st Century: Part 2” on Sunday from 4 to 6 p.m. Participants will include Sally Egbert, Connie Fox, Colin Goldberg, Carol Hunt, and Haim Mizrahi. Linda Hatofsky, the widow of Julius Hatofsky, a West Coast Expressionist, will discuss her late husband’s work.

    Contributions from the audience will be welcomed. Admission is free and no reservations are required.

And the Winners Are . . .

    Guild Hall will present a panel of winners of its annual members exhibition on Saturday at noon at the museum. Those participating will include the top-honors awardee, Stephanie Brody-Lederman, in addition to Mary H. Mulholland, William S. Heppenheimer, Dianne Balducci, Jean Truskty Stiles, Sue Ferguson Gussow, Goran Petmil, Jason Poremba, Stephanie Reit, and Jackie Black.

    The awards judge was Elisabeth Sussman, a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Admission is free.

Raymond in Southampton

    Anne Raymond, who lives in East Hampton, will have a show of her recent paintings at 4 North Main Gallery in Southampton beginning today. A reception will be held Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.

    Titled “Moments,” the show is about “attention to the visual moments in life that inform all others,” according to the artist. “They reference atmospheric and gestural moments in time.” Ms. Raymond has shown previously at the Islip Art Museum, Guild Hall in East Hampton, and galleries in such cities as New York, Chicago, Phoenix, and Dallas. Her work is also in the collections of museums, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

    The show will remain on view until May 28.

Flowers for Spring

    Romany Kramoris Gallery in Sag Harbor will have its second annual spring flower show opening today with a reception on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m. The show is a mixed-media presentation of paintings, photographs, pottery, and blown glass.

    Among the artists with work on view are Muriel Hanson Falborn, Pingree Louchheim, Arianne Emmerich, Laura Rozenberg, Roxanne Panero, Maria Orlova, Sue Wawryk, Coco Pekelis, Mary Milne, and Joan Tripp.

Vito Schnabel in N.Y.C.

    Vito Schnabel, who has long ties to the South Fork through his parents, who live in Montauk and Bridgehampton, is presenting a show, “DSM-V,” organized by David Rimanelli at the old post office across from Penn Station in Manhattan.

    The show’s theme is taken from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which will have a fifth revision released this month. The show is set in a part of the building that housed jail cells and an infirmary. The entire structure is being renovated to become an extension of the train station.

    Participating artists with South Fork connections include David Salle, Dash Snow, Andy Warhol, and Julian Schna­bel, the dealer’s father. The show will be on view through June 4 and is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Chrysalis to Show Davide

    Andrea Davide, a sculptor and aviation archeologist, will show work at Chrysalis Gallery in Southampton beginning Saturday.

    The gallery describes her group of “RoundTimers” as “both sculptural and mechanical: assemblages of finely wrought mechanism, gleaming brass, antique gears, glass, and stone, reflecting time, its passage, and its effects on us through works that resemble timekeepers but are not, since time cannot be captured or kept.”

    Ms. Davide will also show “TimePieces” that incorporate found objects and recovered artifacts, including “Eternity of Fate.” The piece is a result of an invitation to join the Air Force Art Program as an honorary colonel. She participated in an expedition to the Philippine Islands to excavate the crash site of Maj. Thomas McGuire Jr., a decorated World War II combat ace. “Eternity of Fate” incorporates two bullets excavated from the site.

Nature at Dodds and Eder

    The Dodds and Eder landscape store in Sag Harbor is showing “At Home in the Natural World,” work by Plein Air Peconic, which is devoted to painting from nature outside, often using land preserved by the Peconic Land Trust as its subject matter. A number of photographs are also in the exhibition.

    The artists include Casey Chalem Anderson, Susan D’Alessio, Aubrey Grainger, Anita Kusick, Michele Margit, Gordon Matheson, Joanne Rosko, Tom Steele, and Kathryn Szoka. A reception for the show will be held on Saturday from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

Yektai at Tripoli

    The Tripoli Gallery in Southampton will show “Darius Yektai: On Country Ground” beginning with a reception next Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m.

    Mr. Yektai brings global subject matter to his canvases but flavors them with a South Fork eye. He was born in Southampton and returned to the area 12 years ago as a full-time resident. In his landscapes and figurative works he incorporates various mediums into the traditional oil and canvas and plays with the tension between formalism and illusionism.

    He attended Occidental College and received a bachelor’s degree in art history at the American University in Paris. The show will remain on view through June 20.

Group of Three at Ashawagh

    A show of paintings and sculpture will take over Ashawagh Hall in Springs this weekend. Dennis Lawrence, Michael Cain, and Paul Pavia will show their work.

    Mr. Lawrence is an abstract painter who began as a figurative sculptor in wood and marble but shifted from realistic to abstract. Mr. Cain and Mr. Pavia are sculptors. The show will open Saturday at noon with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m. It will remain up on Sunday until 5 p.m.

Massi and Sciulli at Ross

    The Ross School’s seventh-grade class has organized a show of Fulvio Massi and Christine Sciulli’s work for the school’s gallery in East Hampton. It opens tomorrow with a reception from 4 to 6 p.m.

    Jon Mulhern, an instructor at the school, served as an adviser for the students along with Carol Crane and Jennifer Cross. Ms. Sciulli, an installation artist, is artist in residence at the South Fork Natural History Museum. Mr. Massi is an abstract painter.

    The show, which is up through June 12, includes paintings by Mr. Massi as well as artwork the students created, inspired by his work. Students will collaborate with Ms. Sciulli on building an installation that will make use of their own video projections.

Alice Aycock to Speak

    Alice Aycock will give an illustrated talk tomorrow at 6 p.m. in the theater of the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill. The exhibition “Alice Aycock Drawings: Some Stories Are Worth Repeating” is on view at the museum and at the Grey Art Gallery at New York University.

    Ms. Aycock was educated at Douglass College and Hunter College and was part of a group of artists who exhibited at 112 Green Street in the 1970s, others being Gordon Matta-Clark, George Trakas, Jene Highstein, and Richard Nonas. She is known for her large-scale, site-specific sculptures, typically in wood.

    Tickets to the talk are $10, free for members, students, and children. Re­ser­vations have been recommended.

Big Show at Marders

    Silas Marder will bring his annual “Big Show” of small works back to his Bridgehampton gallery on Saturday with a reception from 5 to 9 p.m.

    The gallery asked 55 artists to use 8-by-10-inch canvases to make up to three paintings. Participating artists include John Alexander, Roisin Bateman, Ross Bleckner, Marilyn Church, Sally Egbert, Alice Hope, Jane Martin, Fulvio Massi, and Steve Miller. The show will remain on view through June 18.

   Much like a chrysalis, the stage of Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater is undergoing a living transformation as the company of actors put together by director Stephen Hamilton embody their roles in the Martin McDonagh play “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” which opens for a very limited run on Wednesday.

    “The Cripple of Inishmaan” is set on the island of Inishmaan off of Ireland in 1934. To call it a dark comedy is putting it mildly. There is no political correctness or politeness on Inishmaan. There is, instead, constant cruelty and occasional compassion, both of which are directed at the title character, Cripple Billy, played by Christopher Imbrosciano.

    While this might not sound funny, in the hands of a brilliant writer like Mr. McDonagh it is hilarious.

    “They’re cruel, yes,” Mr. Hamilton said on Sunday, just before he went into rehearsal. “There is also a deep love and affection. Cruelty and violence run through McDonagh’s work, the essence of black comedy, the heights or the depths,” he said.

    On Saturday, 11 days into the rehearsal process, Mr. Hamilton gave the actors a goal: find the key words in the other characters’ lines that compelled their character to speak or act.

    He told the actors that he didn’t want them to worry about pacing or speed at that rehearsal. “Start to feel the real music and the cadence that is built into this play. You may find new colors. There may be a lot of surprises,” he told the cast.

    At the top of the show, a shopkeeper, Eileen, played by Kristen Lowman, is stocking the barren shelves of a grocery store, as her sister Kate, played by Janet Sarno, enters.

    “Is Billy not yet home?” Kate asks.

    “Not yet is Billy home,” Eileen answers. The same five words, slightly rearranged.

    Right from the start, Mr. McDonagh has transported the players, and the audience, to an austere yet lyrical and poetic world.

    As the actors prepare, the stage itself will undergo a metamorphosis from a traditional proscenium theater stage into a theater within a theater, a black box, with the audience seated around the playing area, upon the stage itself.

    Mr. Hamilton also utilized the black box concept last year at the John Drew in Anton Chekov’s “Uncle Vanya.” “No stars, no names,” he said. “Bringing the audience onstage, so close, breathing the same breath” as the players.

    The black box setting, as constructed at the John Drew, puts the audience into an intimate space with the players sometimes an arms-length away.

    It offers another unique advantage to such a production: by restricting the number of potential seats per performance, it allows the company to cast members of Actors’ Equity Association, the professional actors union, at an affordable scale through an agreement with the union.

    The borders of the playing area during rehearsal were lined with spike mark tape, quarter inch thick strips of red tape that show the actors the shape of their playing space before it is actually constructed.

    Keeping the props in place and the set properly set during rehearsal is the job of the production’s stage manager, Morgan Vaughan, and assistant director, Dominick DeGaetano.

    Ms. Vaughan, who recently appeared as Lady Macbeth at LTV Theater, takes on the role of stage manager with gusto, part of a theatrical tradition in which actors know both the onstage and offstage functions in theater.

    It is the stage manager’s responsibility to keep the show moving, to call the light and sound cues, and, of course, to say those words that have a magical effect on theater folk, “Places, please, for the start of act one.”

    The decision to choose this particular play of Mr. McDonagh’s as opposed to another, “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” was a tough one for Mr. Hamilton and the play’s producer, Ellen Meyers.

    Ms. Meyers was a student of Mr. Hamilton’s and took on the challenging role of producer for last year’s production of “Uncle Vanya.”

    “In the end, Steve really wanted to do it,” she said on Saturday of “The Cripple of Inishmaan.”

    Ironically, Ms. Meyers is very familiar with the island of Inishmaan, having taken a three-week writer’s course there. “It is the wildest part of Ireland,” she said, adding that the residents still speak Celtic amongst themselves. It was the only time the worldly Ms. Meyers has ever been in a place where, despite English being the spoken language, she frequently could not understand what people around her were saying, as they would go back and forth between thickly accented English and Celt.

    Once the decision was made to do “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” the process of casting the show began.

    There were some actors whose work was familiar to Mr. Hamilton, whom he felt would fit specific parts very well.

    Tuck Milligan, a seasoned actor both on camera and onstage, is one such actor.

    Even before rehearsal began on Saturday, it was clear that Mr. Milligan had fully embraced the language.

    “He’s as ugly as a brick of baked shite,” he says, laughing before rehearsal. It is his character’s description of a Hollywood actor coming with a movie crew to a neighboring island.

    Mr. Milligan first worked with Mr. Hamilton when both were appearing at the John Drew Theater in Guild Hall’s 2010 production of Peter Shaffer’s “Equus.”

    Ms. Sarno appeared in the Guild Hall production of “Uncle Vanya” last year. “That experience was special,” she said. “Steve called me and asked me if I’d be in this production,” Ms. Sarno said on Saturday.

    But not every part could be filled with actors whose work Mr. Hamilton knew.

    Cripple Billy was such a part.

    In this case, life was mimicking art.

    In the play, Billy finds himself in Hollywood, being considered for the part of a handicapped boy in a motion picture. The Hollywood studio producers have to make a decision: do they cast Cripple Billy to play the part or do they use an actor who is not handicapped?

    “My concern was that I would have to make that [same] choice. I didn’t want to be put in that position. Then Chris showed up. Chris came in and blew my socks off. In essence, what I was afraid of never happened.  The choice was made for me,” Mr. Hamilton said on Sunday.

    Christopher Imbrosciano had wanted to play the part ever since he first read the play.

    “My friend told me ‘They’re doing it in East Hampton. You need to be seen,’ ”  Mr. Imbrosciano said Saturday, taking a brief break from rehearsal. After hearing about the casting call, he made the trip to East Hampton and eventually got the part.

    The play has always had a special meaning to Mr. Imbrosciano. “I have cerebral palsy,” he said matter-of-factly, sitting in the hallway outside the greenroom at the John Drew. He has needed over 25 surgeries in order to simply walk.

    “Steve is fantastic. I trust him wholeheartedly. He loves this play as much as I do. His passion is palpable,” Mr. Imbrosciano said.

    He discussed how the company has come together. “We had our first read-through. Then we all started to connect. You luck out when you work with such talented people,” he said.

    This is probably the smallest black box I’ve worked in. You don’t realize how close they are until they are there. They are along for the ride. The audience is the final collaboration. After all, who else are you doing it for?”

    Also in the cast are Joe Pallister, Georgia Warner, Tom Gustin, Margaret Dawson, and Evan Daves.

    It will run from Wednesday through June 9, playing Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays at 7:30 p.m. and Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m.