Dictaphone Group, which creates live art performances based on findings and stories produced through research on space and oral history, will present “Nothing to Declare,” a lecture performance that explores borders within Lebanon, those between Lebanon and its neighbors, and across the Arab world, tomorrow from 8 to 9:30 p.m. at the Watermill Center.

    “Nothing to Declare” follows a journey that begins at a derelict train station in Beirut and continues as individuals set off on a different trip following one of the three train tracks that used to connect Lebanese cities with each other and with other Arab cities. Their travels include visits to sites along the tracks and abandoned stations to discover past and present uses of these spaces as playgrounds, makeshift housing, torture chambers, and military bases. The group hopes to tour the project throughout the Arab world, including Palestine. In each Arab country, the performance will be expanded through site-specific oral history about people’s mobility in that particular country and about their journey crossing the borders to get there.

    Reservations are requested.

    Marco Albonetti, a saxophonist, and Annalisa Mannarini, a pianist, will perform a duo concert titled “Postcards From Dreamland” on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Montauk Library.

    “Postcards” will include works composed by Gershwin, Rota, Piazzolla, Binelli, Mannarini, Sollima, and other contemporary resonances of world music. Mr. Albonetti, who has been called Italy’s most outstanding classical saxophonist, is the artistic director of the Faenza International Saxophone Festival. He holds a tenured position as professor of saxophone at the Conservatory of Music in Trento and is an external examiner for doctoral studies at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. Ms. Mannarini holds advanced degrees in classical and jazz performance. Her background includes solo and ensemble concerts, film soundtracks, and nationally broadcast concerts on RAI-TV. Her musical training includes studying composition for movie soundtracks with Elio Morricone.

    The two draw inspiration from American energy, European angst, and Argentine passion, according to a press release, as well as folk music from the four corners of the world. The concert is free and open to the public.

    Following a sold-out run at Manhattan Theater Company’s Studio at Stage II, “Murder Ballad,” featuring music and lyrics by Juliana Nash, an indie rock singer-songwriter who lives in Amagansett, will transfer to the Union Square Theater for a nine-week engagement. The musical will feature three of the cast members from its M.T.C. run, John Ellison Conlee, Rebecca Naomi Jones, and Will Swenson. Caissie Levy will join them in the role of Sara. The musical has received five Lucille Lortel nominations, including best musical. Performances will resume at the Union Square Theatre on May 7, with a press opening set for May 22. A cast album will soon be released from Yellow Sound Label. Tickets for the Union Square Theater engagement are available via ticketmaster.com.

    The Choral Society of the Hamptons will hold auditions for its next concert, which will feature Handel’s “Israel in Egypt” and Bach’s Cantata No. 79. Those wishing to audition are invited to sit in for the first rehearsal on Monday at 7:30 p.m. at the Presbyterian Church in Bridgehampton. Auditions will take place on April 29 with Mark Mangini, the society’s music director, and most rehearsals will be on Mondays from 7:30 to 10 p.m. at the church. Those auditioning should be prepared to sing a short song, for which accompaniment will be provided. They will also be asked to demonstrate sight-reading ability. The concert will be at the Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in East Hampton on June 29. Auditions can be scheduled by calling 204-9402.

   First love and first time at the theater should be joyful experiences, and when artfully combined, as in the Springs Community Theater production of “Peter Pan” at Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater, they are simply a blast.

    The theater was packed for the Sunday matinee, and the energy of the little ones in the audience, with an occasional mommy or daddy thrown in, was palpable at the curtain.

    For many of those in the house — and some of those on the stage, as well — “Peter Pan” would be their first experience of live theater. Would that the rest of their firsts be as joyful as this one.

    Based on the play by Scottish writer Sir James Matthew Barrie, which was itself based on the novel by Sir Barrie, “Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up,” the musical in its current form was put together by Jerome Robbins, director and choreographer of the 1954 Broadway production, starring Mary Martin in the title role.

To give us the show we have today, the work of the initial composer and lyricist team, Mark Charlap and Carolyn Leigh, was augmented with songs by the brilliant team of Jule Styne, the composer, and the lyricists Betty Comden and Adolph Green.

The Springs Community Theater production of the play stars Jayne Freedman in the title role and was produced by Barbara Mattson. Ms. Freedman said in a recent interview that she’d always wanted to play the role, and the audience can see why as she joyfully sings and dances her way through the show. She has a fine belt voice, which she displays whether planted on terra firma or flying through the air.

    Speaking of flying, the “oohs” and “aahs” from the audience when Peter Pan first enters and when the Darling family children, Wendy (Paula Guerra), John (Dylan Andrada), and Michael (Colin Freedman), first fly through the air made the theater vibrate with happiness.

    The Darling children are just that. Ms. Guerra’s Wendy is a shy one, but charmingly so. Wendy is on the verge of first love, of kissing and wanting to be kissed by a boy. She is just a breath away from that point. It is a breath that Peter will not give her, for to do so would mean growing up and having to wear a tie.

    Co-starring as Mr. Darling and Captain Hook is the always-funny Josh Gladstone. He had the children in the audience booing and hissing him on every gleefully evil entrance. I was laughing so hard, I was afraid I might roll into the improvised orchestra pit, to my right in the house of the John Drew. Mr. Gladstone may have left a bite mark or two on the scenery, but what the heck, he runs the place and knows what these things cost.

    Actually, he is to be commended twice, once for his performance and again in his role as artistic director of the John Drew, for his foresight in bringing Springs Community Theater into the space.

    For your first time in the audience of a musical or, more important, your first time performing onstage in a musical, to be in such a beautiful theater as this, is awesome.

    This production accomplishes something many loftier productions often fail to do — connect the audience to the players and vice versa. It puts the “community” in community theater.

    Community theater should not be confused with amateur theater, as this production attests, not when you have strong professional elements supporting the players.

    One of those elements is Flying by Foy, the company that makes all this flying not only possible, but fun.

    The company was founded by Peter Foy, who rigged and ran the flying apparatus for the original “Peter Pan” on Broadway, and it sets the standard for flying performers, whether in a community theater production or at the Super Bowl. When you see a performer fly onto the stage at a concert, in all probability, Flying by Foy is in the wings.

    The musical direction by Max Feldschuh of the three-man orchestra, which included Mr. Feldschuh on keyboard, Stuart Feldschuh on bass, and Michael Bennett on drums, was excellent.

    Some of the young actors on stage are new to all this, but with more seasoned performers in key roles, the production flows nicely, a credit to the co-directors, Ms. Freedman and Diana Horn.

    Anita Boyer, who is credited as co-choreographer with Ms. Freedman, gives us a hoofing Tiger Lily. She skillfully hits metal to wood, giving many in the audience another “first time” experience — tap dancing.

    She holds down the stage with her troop of Indians (doubt this would have been written in 2013!) during the scene change from the children’s bedroom to Neverland, and her percussive sounds captured the audience.

    One of her troupe, Riley Goldstein, brings a grace and beauty to the stage as she does a “bird dance.”

    Michael Horn’s Smee would hold its own in any production of “Peter Pan,” and his fellow band of pirates are wonderfully wicked.

    The band of Lost Boys is delightful, with Yori Johnson’s Slightly giving a good, strong balance to his higher-pitched playmates, both physically and musically.

    Colin Freedman does a wonderful duet at the end of “The Crow Reprise” with Ms. Freedman, his mother in real life. As in much of the show, the reprise involves the audience, one of the examples of why this show is an excellent first experience of live theater. Theater isn’t a TV or a movie screen or a tablet the viewer is looking at, it is real people. Theater works because the audience and the players want it to work.

    Peter Pan’s challenge to the audience, that the only way to save Tinker Bell’s life is if they all truly believe, is the challenge all plays put to their audiences.

    When a character dies on stage, we in the audience understand that the person playing the character hasn’t really died, yet we suspend that disbelief, and allow ourselves to accept what we see as if it were truth. The relationship between audience and players is learned through experience.

    The little girl behind me turned to her mother early in the show and asked about Peter Pan, “Mom, is that a girl?”

    The answer is, “Yes, that is a girl, and it is Peter Pan.”

    A good first-time lesson.

    There will be two more“Peter Pan” shows, tomorrow and Saturday, both at 8 p.m. Tickets are $25 for adults and $15 for those under 18.

   Behind a black curtain, a shaft of light fell from a vent in the eaves of the South Fork Natural History Museum barn, dimly illuminating video equipment and stacks of twigs and branches. To eyes grasping for a way to make sense of the space, it was a welcome sight. To Christine Sciulli, however, it was a challenge.

    “The Expansive Field: The Environmental Art of Christine Sciulli” will open this weekend on the grounds of the museum, known informally as SoFo, as part of an Earth Day celebration on Saturday from noon to 9 p.m. The centerpiece of the show, an indoor installation where geometric light projections interact with organic material in an immersive experience, is dependent on near to total darkness to fully engage with it.

    SoFo didn’t have an extension ladder, but this being Bridgehampton, a few phone calls found a neighbor willing to lend one, in this case, Topping Rose House just down the turnpike. Ladder retrieved, the SoFo grounds crew tacked black fabric on the outside of the vent. It was not an ideal solution, but it would give Ms. Sciulli the darkness she needed until a more elegant approach was possible. “I love the look of the barn and don’t want anything to interfere with it.” She said she hoped to have the fabric tacked up inside instead so that it is not visible from the exterior.

    Ms. Sciulli is SoFo’s first artist in residence. In her office on Thursday, Carol Crasson, the museum’s education and communications director, said establishing such a program was her intention from the inception of SoFo. “I always wanted to have an artist in residence,” she said in her office on Thursday. “It’s how I got into natural history, through drawing and organic form. That is what always has interested me.”

    The mission of SoFo’s founders, who began the organization in 1989, was to engage the public in their own emotional response to the natural world and they have built the organization’s programs around that model. “We know that no adult will run over a turtle if they have had a personal experience with that animal,” Ms. Crasson said. Art was another way they envisioned connecting people to nature.

    But it wasn’t until Ms. Crasson and SoFo’s director, Frank Quevado, saw Ms. Sciulli’s work that the idea really caught fire. “I thought it was just magical, but so layered and there were so many lessons that could be taken away from her work. It seemed perfect that she be the first artist in residence,” Ms. Crasson said.

    The two discovered each other inadvertently. Ms. Sciulli signed up too late for a walk in the Andy Warhol Preserve. Ms. Crasson found Ms. Sciulli’s Web site while writing her a note to say she was sorry she was not able to make it. “I saw this work that combines so beautifully art, mathematics, natural materials, and an insight into something much larger than its individual parts.”

    She only began work at the site on April 8, when the barn became ready and still had a lot to do last Thursday to realize her vision for Saturday. She was devising ways for kids to interact with her work, including building their own structures out of brush, branches, and trimmings down by the pond or near the barn and then projecting light onto them after dark. She wants to have friends come and contribute across disciplines, a poet for the outdoors and a singer for the installation, where the light waves could react to the sound waves in her voice. And that is just for Saturday.

    Her longer-term vision for the residency, which lasts through Memorial Day, is to have more musicians perform and workshops with different schools tied to their math curriculum, rather than their art. After the Sag Harbor School’s math fair on May 1, she has proposed an open studio at which students can learn about geometry through her light projections by seeing it move through three dimensions, “how a line in space is a flat plane and how they intersect to get dots and points. A lot of it is elementary, but I’m sick of people saying they don’t like math and I’m trying to help make it interesting.” She has discussed the idea of bringing Ross School students with the head of the school’s math department. “It’s an open studio, not a static exhibition. I really want to engage people in a dialogue.”

    “I’m calling the project ‘The Expanding Field,’ as a note to myself to push the boundaries of what I’m doing. Once you get locked into what you like doing, you stop taking chances.” Instead, she is figuring out ways to bring elements of her dark interior world out into the daylight, which she finds both terrifying and invigorating.

    She has already erected an upside down privet structure, shaped not unlike an unwrapped teepee near the barn, something for the children to enter or use as inspiration for their own structures. She once taught art to children and misses the interaction. “I don’t know where this will go, but I like to be with people and have them see stuff in progress. People think you get an idea and that’s it, that’s the piece. It’s nice to know that incidental things happen along the way, experimental structures, that have nothing to do with the finished work. Part of it is about playing, I think.”

    Ms. Sciulli has spent much of her career in New York City, but recently she and her husband, Carter Burwell, decided to raise their family of three young children full-time in Amagansett. Although she found the transition relatively easy, there is a tension between the strictures of being a “serious artist” in New York art world terms and embracing a more relaxed approach to style and substance that befits the East End environment and is necessary for this assignment.

    “I felt very self-conscious making that structure out there. I thought ‘if my 20-year-old self could see me. . . .’ But there is something liberating about not being so precious about what you are doing, even if you are constantly aware of the cultural critique.”

    After the residency, Ms. Sciulli’s work will be seen in Denmark, where she will be part of a group show of site-specific installations in the town of Fjellerup in July. She will take over an old ice barn not unlike the one here. She is also one of five finalists for her proposal to transform a city block in Philadelphia, where one of the first net-zero community complexes (that will produce as much energy as it uses) has been built.

   The spring program presented Sunday by the Choral Society of the Hamptons at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church was an engaging and enjoyable study in intimacy and nuance. What at first appeared as a strange collection of repertoire proved very effective in reminding the listener of how beautiful even the simplest parts of life can be under the proper lens.

    The concert opened with selections from “Frostiana,” Randall Thompson’s 1959 setting of seven poems by Robert Frost.  Thompson’s music, in conscious emulation of Frost’s poetry, allows the performer and listener to find the beauty that even the simplest idea or activity may contain when examined lovingly. The frequent unison passages and straightforward rhythms have led some conductors to deem this music “accessible” (ugh!) to high school or non-select college choirs, resulting in more than a few wretched, plodding renditions over the years. On Sunday, however, the Choral Society bore out the beliefs of the poet and composer, proving that the simple can be profoundly beautiful.

    “The Road Not Taken” is perhaps the most famous of Frost’s poems and provides the text for the opening of “Frostiana.” While clearly articulating the words, the chorus sang beautifully flowing phrases with a thrilling execution of dynamic contrasts led with elegance and precision by Jennifer Scott Miceli,  the society’s guest conductor. Her gestures struck a perfect balance between clarity and expressivity, with no motion wasted.

    In “The Pasture,” the tone, balance, and blend of the tenors and basses as they alternated between unison and three-part textures were delightful. In fact, they made a compelling case for joining them in their care of the pasture and the baby calf.  “A Girl’s Garden” featured the sopranos and altos, who handled the twin challenges of crisp articulation and lively storytelling admirably, and also produced a lovely unison sound.

    “Choose Something Like a Star” is the final movement in “Frostiana,” and is scored for soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. Despite a few passages where the altos were a bit under pitch, the movement provided an inspiring finish to the first portion of the program. The chorus showed off its dynamic range and discipline, managing the gradual increase of energy that builds the piece to its climax. The sopranos should be especially recognized for their unity of tone and expressivity over many extended repetitions of the words “O Star!” Arielle Levioff’s expert, nuanced performance at the piano was a perfect complement. The  piano parts are an integral part of  the Thompson compositions, and Ms. Levioff’s playing showed keen awareness of the piano’s shifting role.

    Next followed a sensitive presentation of Eric Whitacre’s “Five Hebrew Love Songs,” with Juliane Klopotic’s finesse at the violin and Sharon Pesenti’s inspired reading of the Hebrew texts providing perfect complements to the singers’ earnest and expressive delivery. The texts for these songs were written by Hila Plitmann, whom Mr. Whitacre would later marry, and each one of these charming pieces distills a moment shared by the two young musicians. The chorus handled the rhythmic and harmonic challenges with great dexterity, and the warmth of their tone invited the listener to be part of a delicate and intimate experience.

    The next segment featured another talented husband and wife team, Jane Hastay and Peter Weiss. They performed three jazz standards on piano and upright bass. With 21 years’ experience making music together, it is not surprising that you can almost see the thoughts passing back and forth between them as they play and sing. Many residents here probably have heard these artists while dining or socializing, but the concert setting provided an opportunity to listen more closely to their beautiful tone and skilled improvisation. Richard Scollo’s stylings on the alto sax added another layer of beauty and interest.

    The final piece of the afternoon was Robert Chilcott’s “A Little Jazz Mass.”  Mr. Chilcott employs a variety of jazz styles in his setting of the Ordinary of the Mass, while also honoring other techniques such as counterpoint and thematic development.  The piece requires singers to navigate some pretty tricky syncopations and tune extended harmonies, both of which can lie outside of the typical choral singer’s comfort zone. The Choral Society not only handled these challenges but delivered impeccable Latin diction. The sound of the group succeeded in embracing the variety of moods inherent in the text as well as the diverse grooves in the music. Sean Fitzpatrick confidently established and nurtured each new feel at the piano, with excellent help from Mike Hall on bass and Ellis Holmes on percussion.

    Each element of Sunday’s concert was carefully prepared and affectionately performed, and the Choral Society of the Hamptons deserves congratulations for a performance that brought pleasure to the ear and heart.

   Adam Judd is a member of the faculty of the Ross School in East Hampton. This is his first review for The Star.

   James Katsipis of Montauk had the idea to join Kickstarter, an online site that raises money for individual creative projects, on a whim and a Hail Mary, he said. He had no idea it would go off the way it did. The photographer wanted to raise enough money to avoid exhibiting his work within traditional borders and frames.

    As of this week, the site has raised more than $10,000, several thousand more than he had asked for, and his video, “Cold Water Surfing Series,” has received over 1,000 hits. It can be viewed on the Kickstarter site through Sunday, and then at an exhibit at Neoteric Fine Art in Amagansett from April 26 through May 22.

    The video was shot this past winter in Montauk and Ireland. With his waterproof camera, Mr. Katsipis captures surfers in all types of weather getting barreled in a wave, on a snowy dock, staying warm near a beach fire, and even underwater.

    He began his project with a slide show but an artist friend told him he should make it into a video with sound and music. It took four months for him to do so — and two days locked in his bedroom talking to his computer, refining the sound of his voice. “I’m no Morgan Freeman,” he said, laughing.

    It wasn’t until he attended East Hampton High School that he first picked up a camera, and even then it wasn’t because of a great interest in photography — it was because he noticed the kids in photography class roaming the halls instead of sitting in a classroom. “I realized a camera would be my hall pass,” he said.

    But he failed photography class because he never went. He said all his friends would be out surfing and he was miserable in school. One day he went down to Atlantic Terrace, a popular surf spot in Montauk, and starting shooting the surfers with an old Canon camera and a handful of film. But that was tough, too, because as he watched them surf he wanted in. “It was a double-edge sword.”

    He took up photographing cold-water surfing to show what surfers in Montauk go through when they have the waves to themselves after the tourists and surfing wannabes leave. He wanted to show the breed of cold-water surfers as they really look, and not stereotypical images of blond-haired surfers wearing board shorts year round.

    “We don’t have the hair. We’re all in flannel shirts and jeans, trying to keep warm,” he said, adding that Montauk has just a select few hard-core surfers.

    Donning his own wetsuit, he freezes as much as they do, he said, noting that he has photographed surfers in water temperatures that range from 20 to 40 degrees. These days, it’s hovering around 34 degrees, he said.

    “If they go, I go. If they’re cold, I’m cold. If they’re suffering, I’m suffering. I have a seal’s-eye view,” he says in the video.

    When a storm some called Nemo was predicted in early February, Mr. Katsipis said he couldn’t wait for daylight to get outside and take pictures of his gang surfing in the snowy weather.

    “The snow was going to look so good in the photos. I couldn’t sleep. It was like Christmas,” he said Friday, tucked into a booth at his family’s restaurant, MTK Cafe, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and wool cap, always trying to get warm.

    For two weeks at the end of February, he traveled with some surfer buddies to the west coast of Ireland, where he saw the biggest swell he has ever seen. It was an uncomfortable trek to get to the water, though. It was often raining and the famous Irish bluffs were muddy, slippery, and dangerous. “They’re the most hard-core surfers in the world.” The footage from Ireland was included in the video, although most of it was filmed in Montauk.

    His work has appeared in several surf publications, including those in Ireland, England, and Brazil. Last month he had a picture published in Rolling Stone magazine. His sponsors include Oakley, Whalebone Creative, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, Wampum, Montauk Brewing, Monster Energy Drinks, and NYsea, a collective of surfers, skaters, and artists.

    Once his video appeared on Kickstarter, he started getting messages from people all over the world. A terminally ill man praised him and said his pictures had allowed him to live vicariously through his work. “That made me cry,” Mr. Katsipis said.

    Anyone who contributes to his Kickstarter site receives a piece of the photographer’s work. It can range from a postcard for a $5 donation to a signed, matted, custom-framed image for $1,500. If someone were to donate $5,000, which has not yet happened, that person would receive a photo shoot anywhere on Long Island, either in water or on land, or a modeling session or family portrait.

    His opening at Neoteric on April 26 will start with a party at 6 p.m. There will be music, food, goodies from his sponsors, and a streaming show of his cold-water surf video.

    “My primary force is beauty and style. If something hits me emotionally, I want to convey that emotion, and I think this show will do that,” he said.

James Katsipis

  Neoteric Fine Art continues its series of free-ranging talks featuring individuals from the South Fork who are doing something, creative, meaningful, or different in their careers or hobbies. 

   Those speaking next Thursday at the Amagansett Gallery will include John Randolph, an artist and academic; Amanda Merrow and Katie Baldwin from Amber Waves Farms; Tyler Armstrong an environmentalist and educator; Scott Lewis who will presenting new environmental technology and off-the-grid systems, and Daniel Cabrera, an artist who will discuss the Quechua language of the Andes.

   The symposium will last from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is $10 and free for members.

    “Alice Aycock Drawings: Some Stories Are Worth Repeating,” will open this week at not one, but two venues — the Parrish Art Museum and the Grey Art Gallery at New York University.

    The show, presented in partnership with the two venues and organized by Jonathan Fineberg, an adjunct curator for the Parrish, will follow the artist’s creative process from 1971 to the present through the vital and early stages of her ideas and their development.

    Viewers are accustomed to seeing Ms. Aycock’s work in its final form, large-scale installations and outdoor sculptures, but her drawings show a mind at work, solving problems and breaking new ground. They also provide further evidence of her ideas and sources, offering clues to their meaning.

    “Aycock is an artist who thinks on paper,” according to Terrie Sultan in her catalogue introduction. “Her spectacular drawings are equal parts engineering plan and science-fiction imagining. As in all of her work, fantastic narrative writings weave in and out of her images, inspiring her production of sculptural objects, drawings, and installations.”

    The entire show has some 100 works and will be divided into time periods. The Grey Art Gallery will show the earlier portion from the years 1971 to 1984. The Parrish picks up from 1984 to the present. According to the Parrish, this is a period when the artist “developed an increasingly elaborate visual vocabulary, drawing upon a multitude of sources and facilitated in part by the use of computer programs.” The New York City show will include detailed architectural drawings, sculptural maquettes, and photo documentation for both realized and imagined architectural projects.

    The Parrish will open its show on Sunday and the Grey show will open on Tuesday. At the Parrish there will be a gallery talk led by the curator at 11:15 a.m. Ms. Aycock will deliver an illustrated lecture on May 17 at 6 p.m., and Robert Hobbs, the author of “Alice Aycock: Sculpture and Projects” will discuss the artist’s work on June 28 at 6 p.m. Tickets are $10 to all events and free for members. Advance purchase on the museum’s Web site is recommended.