A Journey Into Theater’s Past

Which East Hampton Village Board member founded the Guild Hall Players in 1931? (Hint: He also acted and built the sets.) This and many other facts will be revealed Friday at 7 p.m. at Clinton Academy when the East Hampton Historical Society presents “Stagestruck: We’ve Got a Barn, Let’s Put On a Show.”

The second of four in the society’s Winter Lecture Series, the evening will feature Hugh King, the village historian, and Barbara Borsack, the village’s deputy mayor, in a look at the history of theater in East Hampton and Amagansett during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Variety shows, plays, pageants, and minstrel shows will be examined.

“Believe it or not, there was theater in the 1880s in Amagansett,” Mr. King said on Friday. Joseph Jefferson, the American actor known for his portrayals of Rip Van Winkle, appeared at Pioneer Hall, for instance. A play inspired by the antislavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was also staged at the hall, located above what is now Hamptons Realty Group on Main Street, he said.

Miankoma Hall, “built by the Ladies Society of Busy Workers in 1902,” Mr. King said, was also a prominent place for theatrical performances. The dancer Isadora Duncan performed there, and the hall was used for dinners, dances, and fund-raising events. Decades later Tsuya Matsuki taught piano to generations of students at Miankoma Hall, where she lived. Scoville Hall, on Meeting House Lane, and the Amagansett School on Main Street were also sites for amateur theater.

The Rollins School of Acting, which was on Huntting Lane in East Hampton, will also be recalled, Mr. King said, as will the “Village Vanities,” an annual show that ran on Labor Day weekend from 1953 to 1964. The troupe comprised “a combination of the Maidstone summer crowd and local people,” he said, though “only the ‘upstreet’ local people took part.”

“Stagestruck” is free and open to the public. Refreshments and cookies will be served at 6 p.m., and the program will start at 7.