Arts

Public life these days is filled with images, some posed and others less scripted or welcome. While celebrities and starlets can refuse to participate in requests for selfies and such, those holding elected office have to consider how the public will view them if they are uncooperative. Fearing reprisals, the world of political photography has moved from very stilted setups to a more casual and natural feeling.

The Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor will launch its 2016 Comedy Club on Monday at 8 p.m. with a performance by Richard Lewis, the comedian who has fashioned a stellar career by mining his own neuroses.

Athos Zacharias and Knox Martin will open summer exhibitions of their work on Saturday at Lawrence Fine Art in East Hampton. The Springs Improvement Society will hold its 49th annual invitational art exhibition from tomorrow through Aug. 21 at Ashawagh Hall in Springs.

Bebe Neuwirth, a Tony and Emmy Award-winning actress, singer, and dancer, will be the host on Saturday at the Ross School Center for Well-Being in East Hampton of a multidiscipline dance performance that will benefit the Paul Taylor Dance Foundation and the Ross School Scholarship Fund. World-class dancers will perform.

First there were cat videos, which were shown in Southampton earlier this summer. Now, the canine crowd will have their chance to celebrate their favorite pets at the Dog Film Festival on Tuesday at Guild Hall.

“My Fair Lady,” the iconic Lerner and Loewe musical based on George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” will open a three-and-a-half-week run at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor on Tuesday. The production is directed by Michael Arlen, a Tony Award nominee and Outer Critics Circle Award-winner for Best Director of a Musical for the Broadway revival of “Spring Awakening.”

If there is anything that funny TV shows like “Saturday Night Live” and “The Daily Show” have proven, it is that there is a huge market for comedy. And if there’s anything that Caroline Hirsch has proven, it’s that it is possible to develop a comedy business with longevity.

Thirteen concerts, 32 instrumentalists, and 30 composers in five venues in four weeks: The Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival has put together another outstanding series of summer events that promises to entertain and enrich aficionados.

Maia Ruth Lee and Peter Sutherland, an artistic couple with varying viewpoints and methods, have individual shows at the Fireplace Project in Springs, both of which seem reflective of the country’s mood on the eve of a divisive presidential election and in the wake of a global wave of violence and uncertainty.

A night of swing dancing with the George Gee Swing Orchestra will take place Saturday evening from 6 to 8 in the concert hall of the Southampton Arts Center.

“Paint at the Parrish,” a monthly program of gallery discussions and activities tailored to people with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia and their caregivers, will be honored tonight with a benefit sponsored by the Alzheimer’s Disease Resource Center from 6 to 8.

“Betting on Zero” isn’t your typical summer blockbuster, even for a documentary. There are no absolute winners and, arguably, no clear heroes. It’s not about kids or animals, and it is set in the until-recently lackluster world of finance.

Martha Redbone comes by her immersion in American Roots music honestly. Her late father was an African-American from North Carolina, her mother was a Cherokee-Shawnee-Choctaw from Appalachia, and she spent much of her youth in Kentucky coal-mining country. The singer-songwriter’s lineage has inspired “Bone Hill: The Concert,” an interdisciplinary theater work that will be presented at Guild Hall tomorrow at 8 p.m.

Magdalene Brandeis, associate director of the Stony Brook Southampton M.F.A. in Film program offered in association with Killer Films, attended a special March on Washington Film Festival awards ceremony at the White House on July 20.

The Watermill Center will launch its annual Scaler Lecture Series on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. with a talk by Kinan Azmeh, a Syrian clarinetist and composer, titled “Art in Times of Crisis.” Robert Wilson, the center’s artistic director, and Kate Eberstadt, a former artist-in-residence there, have selected the six speakers.

Solo exhibitions of work by Sharon Horvath and Adrian Nivola will be shown at the Drawing Room in East Hampton. The East Hampton Library has inaugurated a local art exhibition series in its Tom Twomey Gallery with a show of work by Karen Peters Sloves. A reception will take place Saturday from 3 to 4:30 p.m., and the exhibition will continue through Aug. 5.

“Carousel,” a free concert by Robert Bruey, a singer-songwriter, will take place at the Montauk Library on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.

Dozens of skilled craftsmen are well on their way to converting a falling-down wreck into a showplace.

“Top Drawer: Stories of Dysfunction and Redemption From Park Avenue to Havana,” a one-woman show written and performed by Adelaide Mestre that combines music and storytelling, will be performed at Guild Hall in East Hampton on Tuesday evening at 7.

The Upright Citizens Brigade comedy-training schools have produced so many hot names in the industry that you never know if the performers you’re seeing on its stages in New York and Los Angeles will be the next Aziz Ansari, Kate McKinnon, Jack McBrayer, or Rob Corddry.

As much as purists love a meaty, topical play, everyone can appreciate a good farce now and then, particularly in the summer. Purpled Pheasant Productions, a new professional theater group based at the Southampton Cultural Center, has chosen to introduce itself through the latter.

The sculptor Michael Combs, whose work is inspired by the lives of his ancestors, North Fork baymen, fishermen and decoy-carvers, will sign copies of his new book in the lobby of the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill on Sunday at 11 a.m. “Time Out of Mind,” an exhibition of oil paintings by Michael Oruch, will open with a reception Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. at Art Space 98 in East Hampton and remain on view through Aug. 22.

After months of silence and speculation, Guild Hall announced last Thursday that Andrea Grover has been named executive director to replace Ruth Appelhof, who is retiring.

“Bohème to Broadway,” an evening of music ranging from opera classics to Broadway and beyond, will take place at the Southampton Arts Center on Saturday at 7 p.m. Melissa Zapin, a vocalist, actress, and voiceover artist, will perform with Willy Falk, a Tony Award-nominated actor-singer, and Konstantin Soukhovetski, a conductor and pianist. Tickets are $50 and include a preconcert reception.

Two concerts that will be welcome summer events for lovers of chamber music will take place at Guild Hall tomorrow and Saturday night at 7, well before other established festivals here. Six musicians from the New York Philharmonic will give the back-to-back concerts along with a guest pianist, the first time the Philharmonic has been represented on the John Drew Theater stage.

If you think eating 70 hot dogs in 10 minutes is difficult, imagine performing all 37 of William Shakespeare’s plays in 90 minutes. Ian Harkins, Shannon Harris, and Rafe Terrizzi will attempt the seemingly impossible feat not once but 10 times starting Saturday at 7:30 p.m. at the Southampton Cultural Center.

The Steve Shaughnessy Quartet will perform a live show at the Sag Harbor Whaling and Historical Museum tomorrow at 6 p.m.

Just as an artist working in assemblage would craft a three-dimensional project with objects that take up space and achieve a specific goal, so did Karyn Mannix build her working art studio from scratch.

The Montauk Library will present “Recipes for Disaster,” a free one-man show in which Charles Baran, an actor and singer, serves up a smorgasbord of music, comedy, and zaniness, on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.

“The Hamptons Get Mortified” will return to the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill tomorrow evening at 6. “Mortified” is a stage show featuring participants who bring in their most embarrassing childhood artifacts to display before a public audience.