Arts

Dazed and Confused

    The Eric Firestone Gallery in East Hampton will open the summer season on Saturday with “Dazed and Confused,” a group show of contemporary art, which will remain on view through June 15.

    According to the gallery, the work in the show reflects “aesthetic emotion,” which the art critic Roger Fry characterized in 1920 as a positive, pleasurable response to an object.

    The East Hampton Historical Society’s annual trustees’ tag sale will be held Saturday from 9 a.m. until noon on the back lawn of the society’s headquarters, the Osborn-Jackson House on Main Street.

    Items both useful and collectible will include furniture, lighting, household items, folk art, and decorative home accessories. A midcentury Dunbar table, a set of Windsor dining chairs, garden planters, and glassware are among the offerings.

    The tag sale is a benefit for the historical society.

    They came together in a rehearsal studio on 42nd Street in the Broadway district on May 5 to embark on an artistic journey.

    “Conviction,” a drama by Carey Crim that will begin its world premiere run at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor on Tuesday, was about to receive its first read through, the very first step in what would have to be an intense rehearsal period.

    The exploration of the relationship between artist, viewer, and art itself is at the core of “Red,” the 2010 Tony Award-winning play by John Logan, being revived in a black-box setting on the stage of Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater starting Wednesday.

    Almond Zigmund, an artist who lives in East Hampton and Brooklyn, has a new installation, “Plane Sight,” on view in what seems at first an unlikely location, the Children’s Museum of the Arts in Lower Manhattan. Founded in 1988, the museum occupied a basement space in SoHo that offered kids multiple hands-on art opportunities. Once the museum outgrew that space, it built a new, 10,000-square-foot facility that has enabled it to expand its mission.

    If you were to dismiss the floral studies of Linda Etcoff and the knitted pieces of Laurie Lambrecht as mere women’s work, you would not only be incorrect but would miss out on two worthy exhibitions at the Drawing Room gallery in East Hampton.

    A free staged reading of Bertolt Brecht’s 1939 play “A Life of Galileo” will be held at the Montauk Library on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Directed by Josh Gladstone, artistic director of the John Drew Theater, the reading will take advantage of a new translation that makes the play’s dialogue relevant to contemporary issues of humanism versus fundamentalism.

    “Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself,” which will have its nationwide broadcast premiere tomorrow at 9 p.m. on PBS and locally on WNET, is a spellbinding film that chronicles the life of a singular man. George Plimpton grew up in a duplex apartment on upper Fifth Avenue, attended St. Bernard’s School, Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard -— where he was a classmate and close friend of Robert F. Kennedy — and Cambridge University. But even if you know nothing about his background, you have only to hear him speak to know he was a patrician.

    Tilman Hecker, a resident artist at the Watermill Center, will present “Midnight,” a work in progress for video, light, and three performers, Saturday at 8 p.m. Though the project is inspired by Mozart’s musical scores, his music is not part of the event. Instead, the artists will visualize Mozart’s music through four elements: video, lighting, and the movement of two performers, which correspond to piano, voice, winds, and strings in Mozart’s compositions.

    Classical piano, opera, and folk are the musical offerings this week at the Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton. On Sunday at 3 p.m., Misuzu Tanaka, a prizewinning concert pianist, will perform a program of works from the height of the Romantic period to the early 20th century, including Chopin’s Scherzo No. 4 in E major, Op. 54, Bartok’s Scherzo no. 4 in E major, and Schumann’s Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 14, originally titled “Concerto sans Orchestre.” A reception for the artist will follow.

New at Ille Arts

    An exhibition of paintings and drawings by Virva Hinnemo will open Saturday at Ille Arts in Amagansett, with a 6 to 8 p.m. reception, and remain on view through June 2. Ms. Hinnemo, who was born in Helsinki, Finland, and now lives in Springs, has exhibited widely and was selected by David Salle for the Parrish Art Museum’s “Artists Choose Artists” show in 2013.

    Audience participation would be inadvisable during “God of Carnage,” Yasmina Reza’s play about the gradual descent into vituperation and recrimination of two sets of parents discussing an altercation between their children. The play will conclude the 2013-2014 season of the Hampton Theatre Company at the Quogue Community Hall with a run from May 22 through June 8.

    The Hampton Library in Bridgehampton has initiated a community outreach program that will offer free screenings of films from prior Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festivals on the third Wednesday of the month. The first offering, scheduled for Wednesday at 7 p.m., will be “Patriocracy.” Directed by Brian Malone, the 2012 film explores the extreme polarization in America, which, it posits, prevents the country from tackling its most serious problems.

    “Southampton Blue Book, 1930 to 1960: Photographs by Bert Morgan,” an exhibition chronicling the recreational pursuits of the town’s wealthy summer residents, will open at the Southampton Historical Museum Saturday and remain on view through Oct. 18.

    “Stand-up at the Bridge,” a program of the Hamptons Independent Theatre Festival, will take place at the Bridgehampton Community House on Saturday at 8 p.m. The evening will be hosted by the comedian Joe Mylonas and friends.

    A Long Island native, Mr. Mylonas served 10 years in the Army, including two tours in Iraq, before returning home and starting his career in comedy. A father of two who performs regularly in New York City and on Long Island, he deals with the lighter side of sports, marriage, and raising kids.

    The Southampton Cultural Center will present the Counterclockwise Ensemble, a guitar, strings, and percussion quintet that plays contemporary American chamber music, on Saturday at 7 p.m. At home in a variety of genres, the group primarily plays the compositions of Rich Stein, guitarist and composer, along with pieces by Gustav Holst and Aaron Copland as well as traditional American and Irish folk tunes.

    The collections are smaller now, mostly donated or sold. But the stories and experiences cannot be diminished, and George and Beth Meredith have a surplus of all of the above.

    A visit to the Merediths’ house, in Springs, is akin to stepping through more than a century’s worth of culture: Art, photography, books, ceramics, and sculpture are on display both inside and out. A wealth of South Fork artists is represented, as are, in rare, exquisitely rendered portrait photography, demigods of literature, music, sports, and more.

    Hopes and excitement ran high this year for the Guild Hall artist-members show, an annual event that brings the South Fork artistic community together for one of the largest shows in the region. More than 470 artists, the most ever, submitted work to be placed on the walls of the three main galleries, everyone hoping to be recognized by Robert Storr, a former curator at the Museum of Modern Art and the dean of the Yale School of Art.

    The season finale of the Bridgehampton Museum’s Parlor Jazz series will feature Houston Person, a tenor saxophonist, on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Although he has performed in the hard bop and swing genres, he is best known for his work in soul jazz.

    Mr. Person gained national attention with a series of albums recorded for Prestige Records in the 1960s and spent 30 years recording, performing, and touring with the jazz vocalist Etta Jones. He has more than 75 albums to his credit as bandleader and sideman.

    The Met: Live in HD will present Rossini’s “La Cenerentola” at Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater Saturday at 1 p.m. Composed by Rossini when he was 25, following the success of “The Barber of Seville,” “La Cenerentola” is a variation on the traditional “Cinderella” story, but the wicked stepmother has been replaced by a wicked stepfather, and a bracelet serves to identify Cinderella instead of a slipper.

    Katherine C.H.E., a local singer, songwriter, and mother, will host some two dozen local musicians on Wednesday at 230 Elm in Southampton for “Sing the Peace,” a concert in which artists will perform a song about peace as they define it. Performers in the concert, which begins at 7 p.m., will be invited back to the stage for a grand finale jam. There will also be giveaways of peace and music-related items. There is no cover charge and no minimum drink requirement.

Outdoor Furnishings

    “Exteriors: The Explosion of Outdoor Furnishings” will open at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton on May 17 and remain on view through Oct. 11. The largest exhibition in the foundation’s history, it will include outdoor furnishings, including shelters, fabrics, lighting, and materials, from designers and manufacturers from France, Italy, Colombia, Sweden, and the United States.

There are readings — any number of them around here, given the out-of-scale density of scribblers on the South Fork — and then there are readings for which the usually unacknowledged organizer has gone to considerable pains to bring in someone of distinction from somewhere else.

    Anthropologists and archaeologists often say that much can be learned about a culture by its trash. That may be less true today with recycling, or perhaps even more so.

    Anthony W. Robins will discuss the history and significance of Grand Central Terminal at the Montauk Library on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. “Grand Central Terminal: 100 Years of a New York Landmark,” taken from the title of a 2013 book by Mr. Robins, will address the building’s Beaux-Arts design along with its function, use of technology, and role in urban planning.

    The author is an expert on New York City architecture and history and is a New York Council for the Humanities speaker. The illustrated lecture is free.

    Bay Street Theatre is holding its third annual spring benefit, Curtain Up!, at Joe’s Pub in New York City on May 12 from 6 to 8 p.m. The event will honor Bonnie Comley and Stewart Lane, and Pia and Jimmy Zankel, and will be hosted by Scott Schwartz, the theater’s new artistic director.

    “Dance Is Now,” a fund-raising performance by three East End dance companies, will be held Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Southampton Cultural Center. The evening will support a new initiative of the cultural center to emphasize dance performance and education in its programming.

     The participating companies are Danse Arts and Studio 3 of Bridgehampton, and Hamptons Dance Authority of Southampton. The program will feature popular music and performances by several professional and amateur dancers.

    A buffet dinner theater with cabaret-style performances will take place Saturday at 6 p.m. in the Session House of the East Hampton Presbyterian Church.

    Music ranging from original songs to Gershwin will be performed by Barbara Borsack, David Cataletto, Suzanne Nicoletti, Susan Vinski, Richard Barons, Peggy Sherrill, Rick Chapman, Heddie Edwards, Liz and Joe Eckman, and Lisa Ashkenazie.

    The Watermill Center will open its doors Saturday afternoon from 2 to 6 for a variety of activities and programs. Blakeley White-McGuire, a principal dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company, will lead a free movement workshop for all ages, titled “Cultivating Physical Presence,” at 2. Participants will explore performance through basic movements such as walking, standing, running, and skipping. Comfortable clothing and shoes have been recommended.

    The Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival will present the East Coast premiere of “Penny & Red: The Life of Secretariat’s Owner” on Sunday at 2:30 p.m. at Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor. The film, directed by John Tweedy and narrated by Diane Lane, tells the story of Penny Chenery and Secretariat, her champion thoroughbred, also known as Big Red, who won racing’s Triple Crown in 1973.