If the East End teems with hidden artistic talent, then the annual studio tour sponsored by the Artists Alliance of East Hampton is one of the summer’s singular pleasures of discovery. In the era of slow food and organic harvest, it feels spot-on to find a studio at the end of a country road, discuss art with the artist, and perhaps leave with that gem for your empty wall space.

    Last weekend’s tour showcased some 22 artists, largely in East Hampton though there were a smattering of studios in Bridgehampton, Sag Harbor, and Water Mill. If you missed the tour, however, it would be worth your while to drop by Ashawagh Hall in Springs, where the annual alliance members exhibition will be on view through Sunday. Paintings, drawings, sculpture, mixed-media works, and photographs by some 100 artists, including virtually all the participants in the studio tour, are on view, in most cases a single piece that is representative of their work at large.

    A little context here. The artists alliance was started in 1984 as a tribute to the late Jimmy Ernst, the son of Max Ernst and himself an internationally renowned artist. (In the early days it was called the Jimmy Ernst Artists Alliance.) Impromptu meetings gave way to full nonprofit status in the 1990s, with bylaws stating that its exhibitions, open to all members, would not be juried. This egalitarian spirit produces shows that are sometimes a riotous mixture of high and low, which is exactly what makes them so much fun.

    That being said, this year’s member show has several abstracts that display greater passion for color and chaos than they do a deft painterly hand or a particular vision. A few stand out for their unassuming accomplishment.  Among them are Maryam Javaheri’s untitled composition in mixed media and Katherine Hammond’s “Attitude.” In spare rectangular shapes, Ms. Hammond’s work on paper explicitly suggests a bird on a piling, with deft childlike simplicity. 

    As is always the case, still lifes, seascapes, and landscapes form the backbone of the show. In her oil “Sag Harbor Cinema,” Barbara Hadden puts you smack on the sidewalk of Main Street. Frank Sofo’s acrylic “Summer Treats” might be a concession stand at a beach on the East End or anywhere in the Northeast, where hordes of vacationing parents and children line up for their requisite hot dogs and ice cream. With his fluffy lavender cumulus clouds, applied in quick, sure strokes, Mr. Sofo captures a summer spirit of freedom and restlessness.

    In contrast, Casey Chalem Anderson’s “Three-paneled Atlantic Wave” serves up a summer as pristine and fresh as sea foam. This oil represents the East End as we like to think of it, unspoiled and serenely uncomplicated. Flanking Ms. Anderson’s painting are Deborah Palm­er’s haunting “September Sunset” and Hannah A. Kinn’s “Mist.” In these evocative oil paintings of inlet views, you can almost feel the chill of changing seasons and atmosphere.

    Not to be outdone, two off-center architectural landscapes, both photographs, give the show its edge. Intriguingly, they leave unanswered questions dangling in space. Sharmila Sen’s wonderful “Swan at Broad Channel” is a snapshot view of a neglected patch of yard behind a shingled white house on an industrial waterway — with a concrete Madonna, a yellow ribbon tied around a flagpole, and, incongruously, a swan extending its wings center stage. Is the swan a pet or a transient?

    In “Milltown C.,” Carolyn Conrad assembles man-made objects into a misty panorama that could be a series of toy barns at dawn. Yet, these mysterious structures might also house something alien, illegal, or even tantalizingly dangerous. 

    Still life is the haven of the novice and also the measure of experience. Painterly renderings are no less glorious for harking back to another era, as Pam Vossen’s “Soup’s On,” driven by a 17th-century Dutch sensibility, and Marsha Tucker’s modernist “Eggs and Persimmon” prove. Still life is home. Almost everyone can relate, and it is a pleasure to be diverted by interpretations of what we know.

    Additional highlights worthy of mention include two nudes, each a skewed take on a classical style. Without a specified medium, it’s hard to know how Phil Marco came by “Dionne,” who seems to have been purloined from an 18th-century work, submerged in water, and photographed. She holds up rather beautifully in spite of it all. Anne Brandeis’s aptly named “In Limbo” is superimposed photographic layers with an actual nude lying facedown in the woods — cryptic, a little dire, but interesting still.

    Of the handful of sculptures, Phyllis Hammond’s abstract “Dancing” stands out. It has the feel of a study; it might be even more eloquent if it were magnified. “Hecate,” by Sarah Jaffe Turnbull, interprets a bust of the ancient Greek goddess of the moon into a talisman that is the size and shape of a bowling ball.

    It’s hard to know what to make of the gallery in the rear of Ashawagh Hall, which is reserved in part for several impenetrable collages, or works that look as though they might double as children’s games. A single wooden stick in the corner, painted white, opens a whimsical dialogue. The piece by Barbara Malmet bears an inscription from Colson Whitehead’s novel “Sag Harbor”: “There was summer and then there was everything else.” Right on.

   In its first exhibition of a single artist in its new space, the Drawing Room will present a selection of drawings by Donald Sultan, with one new painting, the diminutive “Hanging Lanterns,” at its epicenter.

    Tucked away in a space between rooms, the painting invites a rare intimacy with Sultan’s industrial materials. For all its physical strength, his plywood, vinyl, and tar rendering of Chinese lantern flowers reveals Sultan as an abstract artist with the romantic spirit of a naturalist.

    A painter, sculptor, and printmaker, Donald Sultan has been critically embraced since his first solo show in Manhattan in 1977. With compatriots such as Elizabeth Murray and Robert Mos­kowitz, among others, he confronted what he understood as a crisis in painting. He was not the first to use industrial materials, but he was the first to employ his particular materials in the rendering of fragile natural subjects, pushing the still-life tradition firmly into the 21st century.

    Sultan doesn’t paint, exactly. On grids of linoleum, he carves his subjects out of applied layers of tar, filling those silhouettes with tinted (or not) spackle, and blowtorches the surrounding surface into rough, black, negative space.  His monumental florals and fruits are at once abstract and representational, as well as imposing, weighty, often erotic, and sensual.

    Which is to say: Sultan’s work is as much about shape as it is subject matter. The belching smoke in his early industrial landscapes inspired poppy and tulip shapes, which begat fruits, notably lemons, which were exalted in his 1988 MoMA show, “Black Lemons.”

    The Drawing Room exhibition feels something like a map to some of those developments. The drawings are roughly divided in two thematic galleries. The back gallery takes on color and shape. The front gallery, which includes several early works, focuses more closely on the artist’s preoccupation with negative and positive space. “Black Roses” (1988) and “Black Lemon” (1989), in densely wrought charcoal, spill out onto the paper.

    Later works, such as “Oranges on Branches July 30 2000,” “Oranges on Branches January 15 2002,” and “Flocked Oranges on Branches January 22 2002,” bore down into the surface with lush, velvety-flocked spheres, defying two-dimensionality.  A “Mimosa” series trades dark for light in spheres that hover, merge, and occasionally play against subtle coloring. 

    Vast red poppies, bleeding off the paper’s edge, have become Sultan iconography. Three poppy drawings are included in the Drawing Room’s show, as is a 2007 “Wall Flower” series of 13 drawings in gouache, 12 of which are hung to great advantage in the natural light of a rear gallery. Sultan’s nominal wisteria, fritillaria, bluebells, and coreopsis look charmed — not real, but more like something out of a fairy tale.

    An avid gardener himself, Sultan romances their shapes. Arranged in free-floating patterns, these are flowers on a mission. Turn away and look back again; you would not be surprised to find that they had hijacked the paper on which they were drawn. The show is on view through July 30.

   The summer benefit season is in full swing and residents are enjoying parties galore while supporting their favorite charities and organizations.

     If the walls are bare or need a change, the ArtHamptons preview party next Thursday from 5:30 to 7 p.m. might be of help. Guests can purchase artwork offered by 75 galleries from around the world at Nova’s Ark in Bridgehampton during a cocktail reception to benefit the LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton. Admission donations are $125.

    White, black, and yellow attire will be the order of the night at LongHouse’s on-site benefit on July 21. Guests will enjoy cocktails, dinner, and an auction  from 6 to 10 p.m. The event will include a performance by Philip Glass, and a special toast to Jack Lenor Larsen, the textile maven and founder of the museum, to celebrate his 85th birthday. Cocktail tickets alone cost $350; tickets for the entire evening start at $750 and can be purchased at longhouse.org.         

    Classical piano enthusiasts can attend a Pianofest benefit on July 14 from 5 to 7:30 p.m. at the Southampton Historical Museum. Tickets, at $200, are available through pianofest.com.

    A must-do for photography lovers on July 14 is the Parrish Museum’s Midsummer Party in the arboretum of the museum, perhaps the last to be held there before the Parrish opens its new facility in Water Mill. The evening will begin at 6:30 with cocktails and a viewing of “The Landmarks of New York” and “Liminal Ground: Adam Bartos Long Island Photographs, 2009-2011.” Dinner, dancing, and dessert will follow. Tickets, at parrishart.org, start at $1,000; after 10 tickets cost $200 per person.

    The Watermill Center’s summer benefit, called The Big Bang, will take place on July 28. Beginning at 6 p.m., it will feature performances, cocktails, a silent auction, and an exhibition of works in tribute to Mike Kelley. Dinner, dancing, and a live auction will begin at 8 p.m. Dinner tickets start at $1,000; cocktail tickets cost $500, available at watermillcenter.org/benefit.

    A few Guild Hall benefit tickets are still available for “An Evening with Patti Lupone and Mandy Patinkin” on Saturday. Cocktails will be served at 5 p.m. at the Elie Tahari store, 1 Main Street, East Hampton, followed by a 7 p.m. performance by the two Tony Award-winners and a post-performance dinner at a private Main Street residence, beginning at 8:30. E-mail ckaller@guild­hall.org to purchase tickets.

    The Bay Street Theatre’s Rock the Dock! event begins at 6:30 p.m. on July 21 with cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, and a silent auction. A live performance by the Tony Award-winner Lillias White will be followed by dancing and a live auction, including trips to St. Barts and Costa Rica, tickets and backstage tours to hit Broadway shows, and more. A $100 raffle ticket will buy a chance to win a 2012 Mini-Cooper convertible. Tickets, which start at $550 and help support the theater’s yearlong programming, can be bought by e-mailing [email protected].

    Edward Zwick, known for his films about difficult moral, social, and racial issues, will co-host the first Alexander Soros Foundation fund-raising event, to be held on Saturday. Cocktails will begin at 6:30 p.m. at Fairview Farm in Bridgehampton, with dinner at 8 and entertainment by MC Hammer. The evening will raise money for Global Witness, an activist and advocacy organization tackling the root causes of global injustice and instability. [email protected] is handling tickets, which start at $1,000.

    Love Heals, the annual benefit for the Alison Gertz Foundation for AIDS Education, will be held on Saturday from 7:30 to 11 p.m. Guests will enjoy dancing and a barbecue at Luna Farm in Sagaponack. Tickets start at $250 and can be purchased at loveheals.org.

    Saturday is also the day of the Rally for Kids With Cancer benefit, to be held from 4 to 7 p.m. at a private residence in Water Mill. The evening includes a private polo match, cocktail party, and silent auction. Tickets start at $100 and can be had by calling Talent Resources, 212-725-1005.

    Shopaholics will enjoy the annual Super Saturday sale on July 28 from 1 to 6 p.m. at Nova’s Ark, benefiting the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund and including fine dining and a children’s carnival. Tickets, available at ocrf.org, start at $450 for adults, $150 for children ages 5 to 16. Children under 5 are free.

    A family fireworks show and barbecue to benefit the Max Cure Foundation and Fundacion Amistad will be held on July 21, with tickets starting at $225; children’s tickets are $50. Tickets can be purchased at maxcurefoundation. com.

    The annual Heat benefit is July 28. The evening will feature live music, mixologists, and celebrity chefs cooking up their signature creations. Benefiting Southampton Hospital’s Ellen Hermanson Breast Cancer Center, the Ellen Hermanson Foundation, and Ellen’s Well, the event will be held from 7 to 10 p.m. at a private residence on Mecox Bay. Tickets start at $300; junior tickets (35 and under) are $200. Tickets are available by calling 212-840-0916.

    The Sag Harbor Historical Society will benefit from a July 14 event at the Custom House in that village. The evening begins at 6 and will include a cocktail buffet, seafood bar, live jazz, and a silent auction. Tickets, at $150, can be purchased by e-mailing [email protected].

    On Saturday, the Southampton Historical Museum hosts a benefit there to support its education programs. The 6 to 8 p.m. event will offer cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, music, and a silent auction. Tickets are $125 in advance, $150 at the door; they can be purchased through southamptonhistoricalmuseum.org.

     The East Hampton Historical Society’s first antiques show of the season will start with a benefit preview on July 20, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. at the Mulford Farm on James Lane. Tickets start at $150, $100 for juniors (40 and under) and can be purchased at easthamptonhistory.org.

    Animal lovers can enjoy the South­ampton Animal Shelter’s benefit called Unconditional Love on July 21. Held at a private residence in Southampton, the evening begins at 7  with cocktails, dinner, and dancing until 11. Tickets, available at southamptonanimalshelter.com, start at $500.

    Poker players may already be preparing for the Hamptons Poker Championship, slated for July 21 at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett. The doors will open at 6:30 p.m. and the Texas Hold ’Em tournament begins at 8. Tickets cost $300 and include the tournament, a light dinner, and open bar. The evening benefits Fighting Chance, a free cancer-counseling center. HamptonsPokerChampionship.com is the place to go for tickets.

    Foodies who want to pep up their palates can attend the Chef’s Dinner at the Hayground School in Bridgehampton on July 28 at 5:30 p.m. There will be tastings, live music, and a silent art auction to benefit the school’s Jeff’s Kitchen and the Jeff Salaway Scholarship Fund. Tickets for tastings and cocktails cost $150, $35 for children under 12. Tickets for dinner in Jeff’s Kitchen, including the cocktail party, are $750. Limited seating for Chef’s Tables starts at $1,500. Tickets can be purchased at thechefsdinner.org.

    Finally, there’s a family fair, fun for everyone, at the Children’s Museum of the East End on July 21, with activities for all, beginning at 10:30 a.m. Tickets in advance are $100 per child, $150 per adult, and can be purchased at cmee.org.

    It shouldn’t be a problem to stay busy supporting worthy organizations this month, and August is yet to come.

Green Fashion

    Barbara de Vries’s design collection “Plastic Is Forever,” which incorporates plastic collected from beaches into fashion, jewelry, and lifestyle products, will be available at Flying Point Surf and Sport in Sag Harbor.

    A film about her project “One Beach” will be screened at the store on Monday from 5 to 7 p.m. It is sponsored by Barefoot Wine and the Surfrider Foundation,

    Ms. de Vries started collecting beach plastic in Eleuthera in the Bahamas seven years ago. Soon after, she launched her line, with a mission to raise awareness of ocean pollution through retail, as well as to teach artisans in coastal communities to use beach plastic in their products and introduce this “new” material into the tourist trade. This micro-economy program has been successful on the Outer Islands of the Bahamas. Her talk on the project can be seen on YouTube.

    Her line won Barney’s New York Earth Day award for best new green designer of 2010. Ms. de Vries also works with the Nature Conservancy’s ocean preservation program as a speaker at and sponsor of beach cleanups.

Economy’s Impact

    “Hard Times: Lost on Long Island,” which was shown at last year’s Hamptons International Film Festival, will have its premiere on HBO on Monday at 9 p.m.

    The hourlong film looks at the recession’s effects on four families on Long Island, including that of David and Heather Hartstein of Montauk. Mr. Hartstein, a chiropractor, died last year of hantavirus. The film focuses on his struggles with his business as a chiropractor and how it affected his wife and three children.

    The film was directed by Marc Levin and produced by Daphne Pinkerson. It is the third of a series of HBO documentaries on the economy’s human impact. It will be shown at various times throughout July.

Latinas! At the Library

    The Montauk Library will present “Latinas!” a concert by the singer Yvette Malavet-Blum, accompanied by Bob Boutcher on piano and guitar, on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.

    The evening is a tribute to Latina singers and heroines. The repertory will include songs from “Evita,” “West Side Story,” and even Bizet’s “Carmen,” along with  contemporary Spanish pop ballads. The show will be performed in French, Spanish, and English.

    This is Ms. Malavet-Blum’s second appearance at the library. She began singing and showcasing at Manhattan’s Triad Theater in 1995. She gives numerous solo concerts each year, typically in the New York City region. Mr. Boutcher has been accompanying her since 2005.

   Guild Hall has a full lineup of films, concerts, and other events for this week that should appeal to everyone in one form or another.

    On Sunday at 7:30 p.m., the Broadway to Main Street concert series, hosted by Laurence Maslon of WPPB 88.3 FM begins with “Better When it’s Banned: Songs from the ’20s and ’30s.” Mr. Maslon, who is the producer of the show and the host of a radio show also called “Broadway to Main Street,” will present an evening of musical theater songs that were sophisticated and provocative in their time, causing quite a stir with movie and radio censors. Songs such as Cole Porter’s “Love for Sale” and Rodgers and Hart’s “Ten Cents a Dance” raised eyebrows and provoked winks. The show stars Emily Bergl, Adriane Lenox, and Marc Vietor, and features musical direction by Deb Lapidus.

    Tickets range from $40 to $65 with discounts for members.

    The next concert in the series will take place on July 29 and focus on comedy in song.

    Other events this weekend include tonight’s Crossroads Music Showcase featuring Daisy Jopling, who was written about in last week’s Star. Tickets are $25 with discounts for members and students. Showtime is 8 p.m.

    The film “Searching for Sugar Man” will be shown tomorrow at 7 p.m. in the John Drew Theater as part of the SummerDocs film series. Presented in partnership with the Hamptons International Film Festival, it will be hosted by Alec Baldwin, who will interview the movie’s director and a special guest after the screening. Tickets are $22 and $20 for members.

    The film “E.T.” will be shown outdoors in partnership with the East Hampton Historical Society tomorrow night at 8:30 on the lawn of the Mulford Farm. Picnics and blankets have been suggested. Tickets are $5 and admission is free to those ages 5 and under. The rain date is Tuesday.

    Next Thursday, Guild Hall’s Red Carpet film series will present “Gimme Shelter,” with a discussion to follow with its director Albert Maysles. Ali Wentworth will moderate the talk with other guests to be announced. The film documents the concert at Altamont Speedway on Dec. 6 1969, at which a fan was stabbed to death in a near riot. The Rolling Stones were the headlining act. Tickets are $22 and $20 for members.

    Tickets for all events can be purchased on Guild Hall’s Web site at theatermania.com.

    Not everyone played Ping-Pong with Leona Helmsley and lived to tell about it. No, she wasn’t quite that dangerous, said Brian Leaver, but she lived up to her infamous reputation more often than not. He and his brother, Rusty, rubbed elbows, gingerly, with Ms. Helmsley while working in her Greenwich, Conn., mansion.

    During a recent tour of Mr. Leaver’s Amagansett house and studio, a visitor had to knock the top of a table in order to accept that it was not marble after all, just painted to look like it. Brian Leaver is a decorative painter, sculptor, set designer, muralist, a jack of all decorative trades and master of most.

     He recalled, with a laugh, a surrealistically godlike moment at the Helmsley Palace in New York City. It occurred the day he was gold-leafing an elevator’s molding and looking down upon Frank Sinatra and his entourage, who were forced to wait for the gold to be applied before being allowed to resume their ascent to the Palace penthouse.

    It all began when he was about 4, playing with clay. “Later I liked cars, so I sculpted a Bugatti, then during the Vietnam War I made military vehicles.”

    In fourth grade at P.S. 166 on the Upper West Side, young Mr. Leaver won a painting competition hosted by Lever Brothers. It made the evening news.

    “The dinosaurs at the Museum of Natural History made a big impression too,” he said. “We lived in the city until I was 10. Summered in Montauk. It was a huge transition to move out here in 1970, but I was thrilled. It was getting rugged in the city. I was robbed at knifepoint.” 

    Mr. Leaver said he had not been single-minded about art until his senior year at East Hampton High School. “Then my family said, ‘You probably should do something with it.’ ”

    His parents had met at the Rhode Island School of Design. During World War II his father enlisted as a Navy flier. “Dad did fashion illustration. He got inspired in the Pacific during the war. There was a theatrical troupe who had been prisoners of war. He drew and painted them in costume, Japanese kind of painting, and sense of line. It helped to form his furniture design. He told me that to create a beautiful design, you should be conscious of each and every line. Each has a lyricism. I try to be conscious of it.”

     Gardner Leaver Sr. taught drawing at Pratt Institute, as did Mr. Leaver’s mother, Eleanor. Two years ago Mrs. Leaver, now 92, produced a book, begun in 1970, of her pen-and-ink drawings of historic places in around East Hampton.

    “Risdy,” as the Rhode Island School of Design is known, was a revelation. “I was surrounded by talent,” Mr. Leaver said. “There was a competitiveness, but not with the others, with yourself. You caught the spirit from others.”

    Mr. Leaver said that for him there had always been a fine line between fine and applied arts. He graduated from college in 1982 with a major in industrial design. His minor in sculpture had him cutting stone, doing foundry work, and welding. “I was fascinated by how things were made, how to open a stone — get the stone out of the way to reveal what you see in it.”

    “I was going to major in sculpture, but industrial design offered the broadest spectrum. It’s so varied: architecture, graphic arts, photography, model-making, metalwork, furniture design. I’ve used elements of it all. Now, I do a lot of decorative painting.”

    Mr. Leaver designed the house where he lives with his wife, Suzanne, and two daughters.

    Mr. Leaver said he had difficulty making the transition from fine art to the kind of work that would become his stock and trade. “I came at it as a fine artist who struggled with using the tools of the trade, drafting tools, how to figure scale, read architectural plans, the math of it.” He succeeded, and credited a RISD instructor named Bob O’Neill, known for his cutting critiques, for helping with the transition.

    When his brother married Diane Dickinson, whose family owned Deep Hollow Ranch in Montauk, Brian Leaver was put to work during the summer months. “The approach to work, the work ethic at the ranch. It was tough, formative.”

    His design work began in earnest when Ben Krupinski, an East Hampton builder and business owner, introduced him to Peter Marino, an architect. “He wanted a stenciled pattern with overlays for a vaulted ceiling. He asked if Krupinski thought I could do the math.” He could.

    Mr. Leaver said his work for architects and interior decorators, as well as his forays into mural painting and et design, has grown through word of mouth. He repainted the ceiling design during the restoration of Guild Hall three years ago. “It took a forest of scaffolding and a laser line generator. I liked it. It was a rarified space up there.”

    In May, he was designing sets at Guild Hall for a production of “Uncle Vanya” and, at the same time, doing the same thing for a production of “Extremities” at the Bridgehampton Community House. “What made it challenging was, I was also doing the sets for ‘Little Me,’ the musical at the Ross School,” where his younger daughter is a sophomore. Mr. Leaver has built sets for Ross theater productions for the past eight years.

    He worked with the Jimmy Ernst Artists Alliance soon after graduating from college. “My mother was the first elected president. She had me there as her young son fresh out of art school. There was a Surrealism show. I covered the whole gallery in black photographic paper and used white chalk.”

    These days, in addition to his design jobs, Mr. Leaver is working on a production of “Eve” for LTV, being produced by Kate Mueth and the Neo-Political Cowgirls. He described it as “an immersive theater experience.”

    He can be counted on to help with theater at the Mulford Farm, too, including the barn’s annual Haunted Halloween. “I’m the go-to guy when nobody has money but wants to have fun.”

    Not always. For example, he designed the interior of Billy Joel’s house. “He had gone to the Ligurian section of Italy. I painted the floor. On the outside I painted trompe-l’oeil French doors and shutters.” Mr. Leaver said Mr. Joel told him he didn’t want the house to look uniform, not like Michael Jackson’s patchwork of plastic surgery.

    Nor is Brian Leaver a stranger to Palm Beach, or the Bahamas, where he was hired to cover the interior walls of the Lyford Cay Club with chocolate brown, grass cloth, and painted palms. “I’m really fast,” he said. And while he allowed that some of his clients could be obsessive and quirky in their visions, he himself feels “extremely sane. Both sides of my brain are fully functioning.”

    Mr. Leaver’s wide spectrum of work can be seen on his Web site, brianleaver.com.

   Filming on “A Maid’s Room,” a movie set on the East End and featuring details that will be entertainingly familiar to Hamptoners, wrapped up last week in Bellport.

    “A Maid’s Room” was written and directed by Michael Walker, who first started working on the script some 20 years ago, according to Dolly Hall, the producer. The kernel of the story was inspired by a maid who had been with Mr. Walker’s family for a long time, she said. “He got older and had kids, and the story went from a ghost story and is now a psychological thriller. ‘Maid’s Room’ is partly about wealth and power, and the Hamptons has a mix of wealthy people and small-town life that is always interesting,” the director said.

    “The film is about a family who hire a Latina maid to look after their summer house and their 18-year-old son,” said Ms. Hall, who has produced more than 20 films. The parents go back to the city during the week, hoping to give their son some autonomy. “Things go very, very wrong. The son makes a lot of mistakes and the parents make a lot of mistakes. The maid finds herself in a compromising situation.”

    The project had a relatively small budget, and most of the filming was done in Bellport instead of on the East End. The director has lived in Bellport — a town notable for its marshes and sawgrass, a landscape with possibilities for eeriness — for the last 12 years.

    “Bellport wasn’t the setting, but we had a beautiful house that was very Hamptons-like and nearly the entire film takes place in the house,” Mr. Walker said. The South Fork is “a place where people have these great isolated houses and tend to lock themselves in.”

    “Bellport is much more middle class than the Hamptons and has more mosquitos,” Mr. Walker added wryly. “But there are things in common: They are both summer towns, and there are mixed feelings between the locals and the weekend city people.”

    Annabella Sciorra, well known for her roles on “Law & Order: Criminal Intent” and “The Sopranos,” and Bill Camp, who just finished a Broadway run in “Death of a Salesman,” play the parents. An up-and-coming actor named Philip Ettinger plays the role of the teenage son, and Paula Garces, a film and television actor, plays the maid.

    “At the end of the movie, when all of the elements have lined up, it all ends up on the front page of The East Hampton Star,” Ms. Hall said.

    “The East Hampton Star is part of the community there,” Mr. Walker said. “We tried to use things that were unique to the area, like WLNG or the Lobster Inn sign that everyone passes on the way out there.”

    “The movie is about power and the truth, and how do you know if your truth is really the truth?” continued Ms. Hall. “It makes you think about what kind of lengths will you go to protect your child.”

    Mr. Walker — whose first short film, “Pie Eater,” made its debut at the Hamptons International Film Festival in 1994 — and Ms. Hall’s film  “Price Check” had its premiere earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival. A comedy, “Price Check” stars Parker Posey, who hosted this year’s Sundance awards, and Eric Mabius, who has appeared in nearly 40 films and television projects. “Price Check” will be released this fall by IFC Films.

    Mr. Walker and Ms. Hall hope “A Maid’s Room” will have its debut at Sundance in January.

   “Men’s Lives,” the 20-year-old play about the disappearance of a South Fork way of life by Joe Pintauro, opened as a revival Saturday night at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, the same theater in which it received its debut production.

    When an audience is told how to feel, it usually stops feeling. Allow the audience, as this play often does, to find its own way as the story unfolds on the stage and it will feel, and more important, care about what the author cared about.

    Mr. Pintauro has a rich, lyrical voice. When that voice is channeled through this very talented cast, the results are gripping.

    The story, adapted from the best-­selling nonfiction book by Peter Matthiessen, follows the disintegration of a family, both spiritually and physically, when its traditional way of life, particularly fishing the oceanfront for striped bass with large nets, is ripped away from it. That story is chronicled by an outsider, Peter, played by Victor Slezak.

    It is a fictionalized vision of the impact New York State’s decision to ban haulseining had on the local fishing community some 20 years ago.

    The driving force in the family is the mother, Alice, brilliantly played by Deborah Hedwall. “Time and money don’t matter to us,” she says, it is a way of life that she is defending.

    Fairly early in the play, she confides in Peter about a dream she has been having. “I wake up in my own coffin,” she says, describing an apocalyptic vision of the future, where the great homes of the rich are gone, as is the humble oceanfront shack in which she has raised her three sons, all replaced by desolation. It is a moving moment in the play.

    However, part of the play, particularly in the second half of this one-and-a-half-hour production with no intermission, slips into agitprop.

    In John Ford’s genius film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” there is a moment when a Caterpillar tractor is about to plow under a sharecropper’s home.

    The sharecropper and his family stand guard, resolute, shotguns aimed at the approaching tractor, until they realize the driver is a boy they know.

    It is a powerful juxtaposition that confronts the audience, without words, and is repeated thematically in that script, and lacking in “Men’s Lives.”

    Here, we are told that the fishermen are being crushed by the rich, the sportsfishermen, and the gutless politicians. Those doing the plighting become stick figures, not human, the faceless “them.”

    There is no ambiguity here.

    Twice, we briefly meet the opposition, a sportsfisherman who owns an ad agency, and a state senator, both characters well played by Mark Coffin, who has wonderful comic timing.

    But these two appearances bring us no closer to understanding the forces that are destroying the local baymen.

    It is too bad, because there is so much to love about this play.

    There is a fine cast. Brian Hutchinson walks through the play, and ultimately into death, with a beer in his hand and a shot of booze in his belly. At the end, drowned by liquor and life, he describes his vision of an idyllic death, a vision that could only come from a true bayman.

    This sequence is Mr. Pintauro at his best. Stunning.

    Rob DiSario strikes the right balance of hopefulness and hopelessness as the only family member with any true chance to survive.

    Scott Thomas Hinson plays Popeye, an UpIsland fisherman now accepted into the family. He does a beautifully staged sequence of physical desperation toward the end that stays with you after the play.

    Young Myles Stokowski handles his role with aplomb, as does Peter McRobbie as the father.

    This play is laced with local history. When Mr. McRobbie talks about the family’s whaling roots, you can almost see the men on the shore, pushing out in their dories after the just-sighted whale.

    Mr. Slezak, a very talented, polished actor, plays Peter thoughtfully, with a sense of insight, but much of the polemic nature in parts of this play are borne by his character. When about midway through the play, he tells the family that the state is going to pass a law banning net fishing from ocean beaches, the sequence of events that follows seems predictable, despite the family’s protestations.

    The production values are superb, and well woven into the play. The set, by Andrew Boyce, evokes life on the ocean, as does the sound design by David Bullard. Ditto John McKernon’s lighting design, which nimbly takes us from day to night.

    Harris Yulin’s direction weaves all the elements together, particularly the movement of the characters. His staging of the climax is wonderful.

    If you are interested in the history of the South Fork fishing community, this play is a must-see. And even if you are not, there are some magical moments in this production that you will talk about after you’ve left the theater.

    The one thing you will not be doing afterward is asking questions, because the answers have already been supplied.

‘The Tempest’

    “The Tempest” will storm onto an outdoor stage at Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island for a two-night run this weekend. The 90-minute show, a presentation of the Green Theatre Collective, will start at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, with tickets sold at the door, $15 for adults and $5 for children. The production will take place in a field at the manor, 80 North Ferry Road, unless it rains, in which case it will move indoors to Havens House, 16 South Ferry Road.

    Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett will host “The Tempest” for a five-night run, starting on Wednesday and continuing through July 22, at 6:30 each night except on July 21, when the show will start at 5. Tickets for these performances are $20 for adults and $5 for children. In case of a tempest, the action will move to a nearby barn at 151 Town Lane.

    Audiences at both venues have been advised to take chairs or blankets; picnicking is fine. Richard Horwich of East Hampton, a Shakespeare scholar, is the dramaturg on the performances.

‘The Graduate’

    Mrs. Robinson and her leopard-print bra and garters will return to theSouthampton Cultural Center beginning tonight at 7 p.m. in a Center Stage production of  Terry Johnson’s adaptation of “The Graduate,” through July 29. Tickets cost $22, students under 21 with ID, $12, at scc-arts.org.

   Joe Pintauro’s adaptation of Peter Matthiessen’s book “Men’s Lives,” which had its premiere as the inaugural production at the Bay Street Theatre 20 years ago, will be revived there again beginning with previews on Wednesday with an opening night on July 7. The play, directed by Harris Yulin, will run through July 29.

    That first production of “Men’s Lives” struck a chord in the heart of the South Fork community, a reverberation that affected not only those faithful arts patrons who attended the performances but the backbone of this area — the fishermen and their families.

    It couldn’t have come at a better time. Inside the theater on Sag Harbor’s Long Wharf — which was carved from a former nightclub by Mary O’Connor, an architect — sail-like grommeted canvas was slung between heavy logs, giving the audience the impression, as they entered the theater, that they were under a pier.

    Outside the theater, on the beaches and in Washington, D.C., the “bass wars” between the government and the baymen and the rod-and-reelers was getting ugly. The day before the play previewed, the Baymen’s Association staged a protest on a beach in Amagansett, with about 20 baymen and more than 200 assorted supporters and celebrities including then-East Hampton Town Supervisor Tony Bullock and Billy Joel illegally fishing for striped bass with a haulseine net. Many were escorted away by the police, some in handcuffs, to the delight of the national press.

    Billy Joel’s song and music video of “The Downeaster Alexa” — featuring the familiar faces of baymen like Billy Havens, Jens Lester, and Danny King, with his memorable stars-and-stripes dory — had also catapulted the plight of the baymen into the public eye.

    To say the time was ripe for the opening of “Men’s Lives” at Bay Street would be a glaring understatement.

    And, according to Murphy Davis, Bay Street’s artistic director, and Mr. Pintauro, the work is more significant than ever.

    “Murphy and I were both amazed at the first reading,” Mr. Pintauro said. “The essence of what was in it is still in it. At the first read-through, it was as if the present caught up to the play. I think it’s more relevant now than it was even back then.”

    “If you talk to people, any people, about their jobs, their lives, what they bring to the world, their calling, the same feeling is basically shared by everyone,” Mr. Pintauro said. “Work is not about time and money, it’s about character. This is about people losing their homes, their lives, their souls, but still fighting, fighting right this very minute.”

    For Mr. Davis, the decision to bring “Men’s Lives” back to Bay Street was a very personal one. “At this time last year, when we were deciding the 2012 season, we didn’t know if we were going to have this space anymore. We didn’t know what our future would be. What did we want to do in what might have been our final season on Bay Street?” The play, also, is “a seminal point of success of how the theater started.”

    Although two of the founders, Stephen and Emma Walton Hamilton, have moved on, Mr. Davis acknowledged “what they did to bring this play to life. They are an integral part of this piece,” he said.

    Mr. Davis agreed with Mr. Pintauro that “Men’s Lives” touches everyone. “In the face of loss, something survives,” he said.

    Over the past week, some of those involved with the first production and with Bay Street’s opening 20 years ago shared their memories.

    Sybil Christopher, a co-founder of the theater, remembers saying to Mr. Hamilton, “A play about a fish? Are you mad?”

    “But then I read what Joe had written and changed my tune very quickly, as you can imagine. Emma’s input was huge, just huge. She worked on it all day, every day, from start to finish,” she said, and “it all led to a wonderful beginning, the opening night. I had friends there, good friends, who couldn’t even speak to me after the play. They were overwhelmed and overcome. Totally speechless.”

    “ ‘Men’s Lives’ was, and remains, a creative high point of my life,” said Ms. Walton Hamilton. “The synergy of the political events happening at the time, the birth of the theater, and the unique nature of the production itself made for an unparalleled experience for everyone involved. I will never forget it.”

    Etched in Mr. Hamilton’s mind is “the day the baymen were on the beach in Amagansett being hauled away in cuffs by state troopers, and that same evening watching those same faces in the audience at Bay Street as they witnessed their own stories on stage in Joe’s beautiful piece. Some of them had never seen a play before in their lives. Those were the days we learned what theater could do."

   "For some time I floundered in my efforts to come up with an iconic scenic item that might innately suggest the saga of the baymen's wretched predicament, and also serve as a useful staging centerpiece," Tony Walton, who was the designer, said in an email. "I shared my problem with Joe Pintauro, who mentioned that he had heard of a wrecked portion of a still-recognizable boat hull, which, during storms, had sometimes been tossed up on the beach near Amagansett, but was soon drawn back into the unruly ocean."

     Cloaked in a cold grey February mist, they went to find it. "We could still make out the long and completely deserted stretches of beach to the left and to the right of us. Yet in front of us, down at the water's edge, loomed the very wreck that Joe had heard about," Mr. Walton said. "Gleaming wet, with a quietly disturbing aura emanating from it, it immediately appeared to me to convey the heart-rending essence of the hard and rapidly-disappearing haulseining life and livelihood of the baymen."

     "Our wrecked and ruined remnant, so unexpectedly offered up to us by the upquiet ocean, most hauntingly evoked the very spirit of Joe Pintauro's beautiful play," Mr. Walton said.

     "Tony Walton mentioned one day, with a distinct measure of excitement, that there was a washed-up cracked hull of a boat on the beach that he thought may be useful," wrote Chris Smith, who directed the original production. "He made a little freehand sketch of the upturned hull on a bare stage of sand with a cloth stretched up to the rafters like sail behind it. With those brief strokes, a challenging and cinematic play found its extraordinary, elemental home."

     The sketch, signed by Mr. Walton and framed in rustic wood, is among his most prized possessions, he said. 

     "To be honest," Mr. Smith said, "we were not entirely sure how the production would be received. We had a gorgeous script, tremendously talented cast, and thrilling new space, yet it was all very, very raw. And we were telling an emotional story about the East End to itself. Feeling both miraculous and destined, however, it all came together."

     "To have been involved in the original production of 'Men's Lives' was a rare priviledge," wrote Arnold Leo, who at the time was secretary of the Baymen's Association. "Extraordinary care was taken by everyone to make the reality of the baymen come alive on the stage." And on opening night, he said, "a vital and essential element of the original, traditional East End community lived and breathed that night on stage."

     "Dan and I pulled out an old Newsday review of the play last night," wrote Marsha King, Danny King's wife. "It did exactly what we anticipated -- stirred up emotions that had been buried for some time . . . Similar emotions had shown themselves the night we sat amongst the 'upstreeters' and the summer people who watched 'Men's Lives' with us at Bay Street Theatre."

     "We don't remember which emotion was strongest," Ms. King said, "pride at being recognized as 'one of the baymen' or awkwardness at being there amongst the people who 'do summers' in the Hamptons, and whether they recognized it or not, were part of the reason the baymen's  way of life was being destroyed. There were many times that the characters in the play said or went through things that only those who had fished the waters could truly understand. We were reminded that the ocean was an equal part of a relationship with each of us.”

    “What I remember are the baymen, Billy Havens especially,” said David Eigenberg, an actor who played Popeye. “They took a bunch of us actors out to the ocean and put us in a dory. Billy, I think, was driving the dory or the truck into the waves. To think that amazing way of life is gone really makes me sad.”

    Mr. Havens remembered the first day he met the cast and listened to them read their lines. “I said to myself, ‘They’re not going to cut it with our Bonacker lingo.’ So when I left that night I went home with the script in hand and taped all of David’s lines and did the same for Jay [Patterson] and Jack [Hannibal].” The actors were thankful, “because they wanted to tell the story of ‘Men’s Lives’ and sound original and they did one hell of a job. I guess that’s why they call them actors.”

    “The sense of all being in it together was everywhere,” said Randy Freed, the sound designer. “At 2 a.m., my 3-year-old daughter, Georgia, could be found asleep on a pile of pillows in a back row as I worked, hanging speakers or rigging C.B.-style microphones to the hull of a magical boat that had washed ashore just for us.”

    “How did I write this, all that time ago?” Mr. Pintauro said he asked himself when hearing the play read again for the new production. “It didn’t feel 20 years old. It’s about people being more or less crowded out by wealth and progress. It’s still topical now, but to many more people. It’s a great war that should not be overlooked.”

    Bridget LeRoy is the stepdaughter of Tony Walton and stepsister of Emma Walton Hamilton. Randy Freed is her ex-husband.