Clare Coss, a playwright, psychotherapist, and activist, will give a dramatic reading of “Dangerous Territory,” her one-woman play about Mary White Ovington, on Sunday at noon at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the South Fork in Bridgehampton, following the 10:30 service. Ms. Coss will be accompanied by Chris Epifania, a worship associate, and Peter Martin Weiss, a jazz bassist and guitarist. Blanche Wiesen Cook, a professor of history at John Jay College, will lead a post-reading discussion.

    Ms. Coss is convinced that we have it in our power to create a just and safe world. Ms. Ovington, a Unitarian, rebelled against the expectations of her family and dedicated her life to racial justice.

    Julian Bond, chairman emeritus of the N.A.A.C.P. board, has said, “This play puts history, hope, and a wrongfully unknown early heroine of the civil rights movement on the stage.”

    The Watermill Center’s yearly Berlin Benefit patron trip happens April 16 to 18. Patrons have been invited to join Robert Wilson for the world premiere of “Peter Pan” with the Berliner Ensemble and music by CocoRosie. The benefit will be hosted by Baroness Nina von Maltzahn.

    The full three-day patron trip costs $3,000 and includes a dinner at the residence of the American ambassador on the evening of April 16. Gallery visits and a private lunch are scheduled prior to the premiere of “Peter Pan” on the 17th, followed by a reception with Mr. Wilson and CocoRosie. On the 18th, the trip will continue with a backstage tour of the Berliner Ensemble and a visit to the American Academy in Berlin, with shuttle service from the Regent Hotel. The trip will conclude with a dinner in honor of Mr. Wilson and the Watermill Center hosted by Baroness von Maltzahn at her private residence.

    A two-day patron trip, April 17 to 18, costs $2,000 and includes the same events, with the exception of the April 16 dinner. Premiere tickets for the April 17 performance, which include gallery visits and a private lunch prior to the premiere as well as the post-performance reception with Mr. Wilson and CocoRosie, cost $1,000.

    Tickets can be purchased at watermillcenter.org/events/berlin-benefit-trip. For more information or to make early reservations, Pinki Patel can be called at 212-253-7484, extension 16.

Docents Have Their Say

    Visitors to the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center may know them as interpreters and keepers of the legacy of two of the most influential artists of the 20th century who worked in our backyard. But those who know docents outside of that role, know they also like to express themselves in other ways. This weekend, for the first time, all of their creative endeavors will be brought together in a show at Ashawagh Hall that will demonstrate how much their artistic output is shaped by what they do in their day job.

    “Under the Influence: Art by the Docents of Pollock-Krasner House” will include the work of Sara Coe, Pamela Collins Focarino, Ruby Jackson, Tracy Jamar, Tim Roepe, and Rose Zelentz. Each has shown work previously in other venues, but never together in this context.

    The show opens Saturday morning and there will be an artists reception beginning at 5 p.m. It will remain on view through Sunday at 3 p.m.

Early Spring

At Pritam and Eames

    Pritam and Eames will have an “Early Spring Show” running tomorrow through May 21.

    The show will combine decorative arts pieces and fine examples of American craft with paintings and drawings in the “Art at Home” series.

    Furniture will include a polished steel coffee table by Fran Taubman, a bronze and steel sideboard by Gary Magakis, and a coffee table made from thermally modified oak and decorated with 4,800 nails by Peter Sandback.

    Linda Capello, Aubrey Grainger, and Karen Kluglein will exhibit paintings and drawings. On April 19, the gallery will show Jen Alnwick’s “Working Cowboys” series of photographs.

    The gallery is open Fridays through Sundays through the spring, with other hours arranged by appointment.

New Center, New Show

    James Daga Albinson and Cindy Neuendorf will expand their Hamptons Studio of Fine Art into the Sag Harbor Fine Arts Center, an academy-like environment for instruction, education, and exhibitions on Rose Street in Sag Harbor.

    The first exhibition will be a solo show of work by Karen Kaapcke. Called “Drawing 50,” the show highlights the past six months of a long-term project devoted to self-portraiture during the artist’s 50th year. An opening reception will be held Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m.

    Ms. Kaapcke has studied with Ted Seth Jacobs in New York and France and enjoys working outside the studio setting, including a series done around Occupy Wall Street called “Painting Occupy” and a series of drawings done after the destruction wrought by Hurricane Sandy.

    The center will also offer training in different mediums by artists from around the globe. Weekly classes and specialty workshops will be held in a professional working studio. A courtyard and sculpture garden will provide opportunities to sketch or interact with art along with what is hanging in the exhibition studio.

Gilmour at Marcelle

    An exhibition of work by Gina Gilmour will open at Peter Marcelle Gallery in Bridgehampton on Saturday and remain on view through April 14. A reception will be held April 6 from 6 to 8 p.m.

    Ms. Gilmour is a Mattituck artist whose work blends the figurative with the abstract, with the figurative sometimes more mysterious than that which is unrecognizable. According to Long Island Pulse magazine, “in the best tradition of Dadaists, Gina Gilmour’s paintings are as sarcastic as a stick in the eye.”

   From a Nassau County suburb to Ankara to Okinawa to Amagansett, the path of life for Michael Jeffrey Griffith has been anything but dull, and now his story has become the inspiration for a new television series, with Michael S. Chernuchin, part of the creative team of the long-running “Law and Order” series, in charge.

     “Who’d have thunk it?” Mr. Griffith asked on Saturday, sitting in his living room overlooking the Atlantic.

    Born in 1943 in Malverne, he was a star athlete at Valley Stream North High School, excelling in several sports, including track and baseball. Though a good enough player to be invited to the Los Angeles Dodgers spring training camp as a teenager, Mr. Griffith knew that ballplayers retire at an age where most careers just start to take off. Instead, inspired by his uncle, Arthur Klein, a long-time congressman from lower Manhattan who went on to become a Justice of the State Supreme Court, he pursued a career as an attorney.

    A graduate of the University of Virginia, where he majored in foreign affairs, and of John Marshall Law School in Atlanta, Mr. Griffith was admitted to the bar in 1973. After working in the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office for a couple of years, he decided to go out on his own. But first, he said, he wanted to take a vacation.

    It was a trip that changed another young man’s life.

    “I was going to the Greek islands to spend my last days of freedom before I started looking for a job,” Mr. Griffith remembered.

    A friend who knew he was well versed in foreign affairs asked him whether there was anything he could do while he was away for Billy Hayes, an American convicted of hashish smuggling, who was languishing in a Turkish prison. Mr. Griffith took a detour to Turkey, met with the United States ambassador, and took on Mr. Hayes’s case.

    Eventually, the young lawyer negotiated a deal with the Turkish government that would allow Mr. Hays to serve out his sentence, 25 years, in an American prison. Before the deal was completed, however, Mr. Hayes escaped.

    “Thank God he escaped! It made a better movie,” Mr. Griffith joked.

    Mr. Hayes’s book, “Midnight Express,” which told of his ordeal, sold over three million copies before being turned into the hit movie by the same name, which went on to win two Academy Awards, including one to Oliver Stone for Best Screenplay. Among Mr. Griffith’s prized possessions is a copy of the book, signed by the author, along with the letters Mr. Hayes sent him from prison.

    The last chapter of “Midnight Express” begins with a letter written by William B. Macomber Jr., then U.S. ambassador to Turkey, praising Mr. Griffith’s efforts to secure Mr. Hayes’s freedom. The letter, which is reproduced in its entirety, includes Mr. Griffith’s contact information, and the book became the lawyer’s calling card.

    “You know what it’s like?” he asked. “You know how in every hotel room, there is a Gideon Bible? Well, in every prison in the world, there is a copy of ‘Midnight Express’ in the library.”

    His phone hasn’t stopped ringing since. Mr. Griffith has testified as an expert witness in front of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and has toured Mexican prisons, explaining what their rights are to Americans held there. With his partners at his law firm, International Legal Defense Counsel, he developed a protocol for Americans to follow should they be arrested in a foreign country.

    Building on the work he’d done in Turkey and elsewhere, Mr. Griffith has negotiated an international treaty that’s been ratified by over 35 nations, allowing prisoners in foreign lands to serve out their sentences in their native countries.

    “I’ve been to over 40 countries,” he said, handling dozens of prominent international disputes. Among them was the case of David Daliberti and William Barloon, two American mechanics who mistakenly wandered across the border from Kuwait into Sadaam Hussein’s Iraq in March of 1995. Mr. Griffith managed to negotiate their release, no easy task.

    He defended two American G.I.s accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in Okinawa in 1995. According to Mr. Griffith, the men confessed under duress, in Japan’s notorious Dayo Kanguko detention center; they still proclaim their innocence.

    He won acquittal for Ted Maher, an American male nurse accused of arson in a fire that led to the death of the international banker Edmond Safra in Monaco.

    When he was younger, said the lawyer, he would travel in person wherever necessary, but over the years he has developed “a coterie of contacts,” including attorneys and government officials, around the world.

    “Now, not only can I get you a lawyer in that country,” he said, “I can get you a lawyer from the particular city you were arrested in. That’s important. If you get arrested in East Hampton, you don’t want a lawyer coming from New York City. You want somebody who knows their way around. Who knows the prosecutors, they may know the judges. Any place in the world is the same. That is what I try to do, identify the right lawyer in the right country in any particular city.”

    While his cases and countries are a swirl now in Mr. Griffith’s past, there are two constants in his life. One is his wife, Nancy Grigor, a former leading model at the Ford Talent Agency who now heads Hamptons Locations, which scouts locations for still photos and commercials shot on the East End. The other is his beachfront house in Amagansett. Recently he added a third constant, his pride and joy, a 2012 Porsche Carrera S.

    The TV series he’s signed a deal for, which will put his unusual life story on the screen, will be produced by Sony International through Escape Artists, a company headed by Mr. Chernuchin. The scripts are already written, Mr. Griffith said, with a search on for the lead. Names like Liam Neeson and Ethan Hawke have been bandied about. Each episode will be a fictionalized version of one of Mr. Griffith’s cases.

    “Who would have thunk it?” Mr. Griffith repeated, laughing, as he walked onto his deck to watch the waves roll in.

   Pale of feature and hair and slender of form, Scott Bluedorn does not look like a ringleader or potent cultural force, but then looks can be deceiving. On a recent winter evening, he passed around a plastic container with the fruits of one of his latest projects — worm farming — as he projected slides describing its ideal conditions.

    His talk was part of a symposium at Neoteric Fine Art, an idea he borrowed from the Parrish Art Museum’s popular PechaKucha nights, where East End creative minds describe what they do using 20 slides and about six minutes of talk. His own talk, incorporating the area’s traditions of art and farming, was followed by Mark Crandall, Denise Lassaw, James Ryan, and Serge LeComte speaking on a variety of topics that drew on art, philosophy, charity, and sound.

    Any notion that Mr. Bluedorn might be infringing on the Parrish’s turf can be dispelled in light of his participation as a speaker in the Water Mill museum’s latest PechaKucha, last weekend. Mr. Bluedorn’s events do not stick to the rigid confines of that Japanese model, and the engagement with the crowd is much more interactive and boisterous. It is a vibe that carries over into all of his gallery’s presentations.

    Since he started Neoteric Fine Art on Main Street in Amagansett last summer, the gallery has become a center for creative thinking, display, interaction, and discourse. Mr. Bluedorn’s efforts have attracted the old guard of South Fork artists and intelligentsia who are accustomed to supporting the arts, but even more important, the youth of the community who have steadily shown their support for such endeavors at various weekend shows but have not had many opportunities here to do so regularly.

    It was a dark day when Pamela Williams closed the door on her Amagansett gallery in February of last year. The salon-like atmosphere and engaging shows of work by South Fork artists added to the hamlet’s offbeat and more genuine vibe, which it has kept intact despite creeping signs of high-end gentrification.

    Neoteric is something else. Mr. Bluedorn has taken an old antique-store space and transformed it into its own unique, young, quasi-hipster, quasi-local center for art and creative endeavor. It is not as considered or forced as it sounds. In fact, it is quite organic and adaptive. In the past season he has played Exquisite Corpse, an old Surrealist game, with surfboards, held an AudioVision festival in conjunction with the Hamptons International Film Festival, and presented “Amagansett Armageddon” on the eve of the Mayan apocalypse that wasn’t. On Sunday, he hosted a conference to examine how regular citizens can address the climate-policy needs of the East End.

    The show that opened over the weekend and marks the beginning of a new season for the gallery fits in well with the model. “A Varied Form” is a group show devoted to the figure and includes young and older artists such as Nick Weber, Molly Weiss, Ivan Kustura, Anita Kusick, and Breahna Arnold. Mr. Kustura showed previously at Ms. Williams’s gallery. Ms. Arnold served as curator. It will remain on view through March 23.

    Neoteric’s improvisational sense stems from its inception. “It all came together so quickly. I didn’t even know I’d have the space until June,” Mr. Bluedorn said recently. The landlord happens to be a family friend, so that helped.

    He started in a front room with the idea that it would just be a “pop-up gallery for the summer, very minimal,” but it snowballed from there. He brought in Mike Solomon, an artist as well as a consultant and director of foundations for artists such as Alfonso Ossorio and Charles Addams, to advise him on the space and programs. He put together a show of artists he went to school with or whom he has worked with previously, and they became his core group. “I wanted my focus to be emerging artists primarily from the East End.”

    Although the space came together at the last minute for him, Mr. Bluedorn had been thinking about a gallery for some time. “My first show as Neoteric was in 2006 at East Hampton Studios. I thought it would be a good name for a collective.” He knew then that he wanted the show to be the beginning of something even though it was only a one-night event. The cross-discipline show of young artists and musicians became a template for his future presentations.

    The money he raised through the show went to East End Hospice, which had cared for his mother before her death from cancer in the previous year. It was a way for him to give back to the organization, but also to his generation of artists who lacked places to show their work.

    In the intervening years, he went back to working on his own projects until this location “fell into my lap.” It is not clear how long he will have it. The property is for sale, and while he was speaking, work was being done, loudly, on the roof and exterior walls. He went in with the idea that a temporary space would help the owners raise the profile of the building and show how it could be used commercially. “It’s pretty much what I’m still doing.” In the meantime, he has expanded into the rest of the building.

    “I’m looking at it as a long-term project, now, whether I stay in this space or not.” Part of the plan is for a nonprofit artists residency Mr. Bluedorn would like to establish either where Neoteric is now or somewhere else. “The property here is completely set up for it. It has all these outbuildings in the back that are perfect art studios and a two-bedroom apartment upstairs.”

    He hopes the argument that a place for arts and culture is far preferable to another high-end retail outlet will help him. “That’s what I’d like to see this become, a cultural center with the kind of things I’ve been doing, the symposiums, readings, theatrical productions, screenings, special presentations, outdoor events.”

    The AudioVision festival was one of his favorites. “I thought about how art and the moving image interact with sound, and decided to make it about those elements.”

    The curated invitational show featured artists who did work on records and album sleeves. There were screenings and a session of the Rock ’n’ Roll Shrink interactive performance piece by Peter Dayton. Local bands played with some from Brooklyn, and there were fire dancers and a “silent disco” of different D.J.s playing on separate channels accessed through headphones.

    While Mr. Bluedorn had to be relatively freeform last year in his programs and how he went about mounting shows, he would like more organization this year. Still, he wants to keep the experimental approach. “As an artist, I like thinking about this space as my canvas. Some shows flop, some shows are great.”

    In the future, he wants to incorporate more design and artist-designed objects. “I’m also interested in the cross-pollination of it all: how music, video, performance relates to painting and sculpture and the whole experience of art.”

    Katherine C.H.E., a local singer, songwriter, and musician, will launch the Hamptons Weekend Preview Show tomorrow from 5 to 7 p.m. at D’Canela restaurant in Amagansett. Musicians, dancers, and other performers will typically present a 10 or 15-minute set that might include information about when and where the audience can experience more.

    The show is intended not as an open mike-type event but as a means for local talent — and artists in town for a performance or visit — to preview their upcoming performances. For audiences, the show is a happy hour-type of experience, a way for those finishing work or just arriving for the weekend to enjoy food, beverages, and live music. The Hamptons Weekend Preview Show will happen weekly from 5 to 7 on Friday evenings. Admission is free.

    “There are so many great musicians in the area,” said the event’s producer. “There are so many ways that musicians are expressing themselves, but it’s either a show or open mikes and things that tend to be populated by musicians, onstage and in the audience. I thought that was kind of a shame, and wondered what we could do to draw in people who love music. These [performers] already have a stamp of approval — they’ve got a gig somewhere, it’s coming up. I think that can help people be more confident that they’re going to enjoy at least some of the music they’re going to see.”

    Performances will be largely pre­scheduled, but there will be room for spontaneity. With the combination of a thriving local music scene and an abundance of internationally known recording artists visiting or living in or near Amagansett, she said, anything is possible. “The [Stephen] Talkhouse is just steps down the road. I think there could be some interesting synergy with them. Most of the early gigs start at 8, so hopefully some musicians will stop by to warm up or something. We could get some real interesting folks to pop in.”

    Variety will be key. “I don’t want it to all be one genre of music, or even singers. I’m looking for it to be multidimensional: I hope to have fire dancers outside the window at one show. I hope to bring some of my jazz friends, maybe even musical theater excerpts, and really have it be a fair mix of what’s happening in the local music scene.”

    Crossroads Music, across the street in Amagansett Square, is sponsoring the event and will provide sound-reinforcement equipment for the weekly performances.

    Katherine C.H.E. herself, who is also a coach, healer, and author of “Be True Rich: 3 Keys to Live Your Good Life Now,” will be the Hamptons Weekend Preview Show’s first performer. “Nobody likes to be the opening act, so I’ll probably do that,” she said with a laugh, adding, “I hope people will sample the great food. They have wonderful Sangria.” She will also perform at a fund-raiser tonight for the Sag Harbor Food Pantry, at the Old Whalers Church.

    Artists interested in being part of the shows can contact the producer at [email protected].

    Guild Hall will present a live high-definition screening of Zandonai’s “Francesca da Rimini” on Saturday at noon. The compelling opera, inspired by an episode from Dante’s “Inferno,” returns in the Metropolitan Opera’s production, last seen in 1986. Eva-Maria Westbroek, a soprano, and Marcello Giordani, a tenor, are the doomed lovers. Marco Armiliato conducts. Running time is approximately four hours. General admission is $22, $20 for members, and $15 for students.

    In partnership with the Naked Stage, Guild Hall will present a free staged reading of “The Lisbon Traviata,” by Terrence McNally, on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. This incisive play veers from high comedy to stark tragedy as it follows the troubled course of a homosexual relationship, using an obsession with grand opera as a metaphor to underscore the larger-than-life passions that bring the play to its conclusion.

    The Long Island premiere of “The Drawer Boy,” Michael Healey’s play about two farmers whose lives are turned upside down when a young actor comes to visit, will be the third production of the 2012-2013 Hampton Theatre Company season. Opening at the Quogue Community Hall next Thursday, it will run though April 7.

    “The Drawer Boy” takes its inspiration from a 1972 project of Theatre Passe Muraille (“Theater goes through walls”), the influential alternative theater dedicated to creating a distinctly Canadian voice on the stage. That project, called “The Farm Show,” was the result of interviews with Ontario farmers by a group of young actors.

    Written more than 25 years after “The Farm Show,” “The Drawer Boy” first opened in Toronto in 1999 and has since become a modern-day Canadian classic, winning many awards. Filled with humor and sensitivity, it depicts the sometimes unclear divide between life and art and explores the healing powers of storytelling.

    “The Drawer Boy” is directed by Sarah Hunnewell, the company’s executive director, and has a cast of three. Showtimes are Thursdays at 7 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8, and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. for the first and third weekend. There will be two shows on Saturday, March 30, with a matinee added at 2:30; there will be no performance on Easter Sunday, March 31. Tickets cost $25, $10 for students under 21. The company will offer special dinner-theater packages in collaboration with the Southampton, Westhampton Beach, and Hampton Bays libraries. Tickets can be reserved at hamptontheatre.org or OvationTix at 866-811-4111.

    The third of four tours through the Bridgehampton Historical Society’s whaling exhibit, “Bridgehampton Whalers — A Farmer’s Life at Sea,” happens next Thursday at noon at the William Corwith House Museum there. Julie Greene, the society’s curator, will lead the tour. The exhibit celebrates men from Bridgehampton and nearby who went to sea to hunt whales and later retired as farmers. Through excerpts from whaling logs, artwork by Claus Hoie, furniture once belonging to whaling captains, scrimshaw, and exotic mementos brought back from around the world, the danger, excitement, and rewards of hunting the whale are revealed.

    The casual, narrated tour lasts about 40 minutes. The last tour will take place on April 13, a Saturday, at 11:30 a.m. Tours are free and open to all. The exhibit is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. except for holidays.

    All have been invited to dance and party at the Erin Go Mardi Gras Party at Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theatre on Saturday at 8 p.m., which aims to combine Mardi Gras with the fun of St. Patrick’s Day.

    Joe Lauro’s Hoodoo Loungers and Gene Casey and the Lone Sharks will perform.

    Tickets are $15 in advance and can be purchased at the box office or online at baystreet.org. Tickets at the door will be $25. Attendees have been asked to wear their best St. Patrick’s Day green or Mardi Gras finery.