Arts

Ordinarily, the talents of playwright and fiction writer are mutually exclusive. Rare it is that a writer shows a gift for both, though there are exceptions: Chekov, of course, was a genius who juggled drama and fiction effortlessly, and Oscar Wilde’s novella “The Picture of Dorian Gray” stacks up well against his numerous plays. Add to this list John Steinbeck, who adapted his own novel, “Of Mice and Men,” into a very effective drama in 1937, the same year of the book’s publication. Its simple, tragic material is a perfect fit for theater, and in many ways the drama is more powerful than its fiction counterpart.

The John Drew Theater Lab will present a free staged reading of “The Ape and the Whale: An Inter- play Between Darwin and Melville in Their Own Words” on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.

The Springs Community Theater Company will present “The Wizard of Oz” in seven performances at Guild Hall over the next two weekends, starting tomorrow at 7 p.m. The production will feature the music and lyrics created for the original MGM motion picture by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg and the book by John Kane, adapted in 1987 for the Royal Shakespeare Company in London.

Edna’s Kin, a Sag Harbor band featuring Dan Koontz on guitar, his brother, Andrew, on fiddle and bass, and their father, Warren, on guitar, will return to the village’s Christ Episcopal Church for its annual fall concert on Sunday at 2 p.m.

The 2015 release “RandyPOP!” is a live recording that is both a summation of a half-century-and-counting professional career and a birthday present to the artist who was an integral component to the selections within. Arrangements of songs by James Brown, Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon, Donald Fagen, Todd Rundgren, and others, delivered by a first-rate ensemble, exemplify the jazz-rock fusion that developed in the fertile musical ground of the late 1960s and ’70s.

The Rising Stars Piano Series will present Hunter Noack, a classical pianist, on Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Southampton Cultural Center. A Pianofest alumnus, he will present his themed program “Boyhood,” which includes works by Debussy, Rachmaninoff, Janacek, and John Cage.

The 16th annual Midtown International Theater Festival, which runs through Nov. 22 at the Workshop Theater’s Jewel Box Theater in Manhattan, features dramatic, comedic, and musical performances in a celebration of the finest off-off-Broadway talent. On Sunday, a young man with roots on the South Fork will be part of the offerings.

Anne Seelbach will teach private watercolor classes at the Victor and Mabel D’Amico house in Lazy Point, Amagansett, starting Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to noon. The Sara Nightingale Gallery in Water Mill will open concurrent solo exhibitions of work by Cara Enteles and Stephanie Brody-Lederman with a reception on Saturday from 5 to 7 p.m.

The circus came to the Watermill Center on Saturday. There were acrobatics, juggling, and feats of strength and balance, all of which left the audience awestruck. But because Sweden’s Cirkus Cirkor is a contemporary circus with roots in experimental dance, theater, film, music, and visual art, the group’s open rehearsal of a work in progress was a mesmerizing, haunting, and entertaining evening quite unlike the circus most of us grew up with.

Following on the interest generated by the pipe organ that was recently installed in Queen of the Most Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Bridgehampton, there will be an Organ Crawl to four pipe organs in that hamlet on Saturday.

An organ crawl is something like a pub crawl, but in this case participants will hop from one pipe organ to another after spending a bit of time at each. It is also an opportunity to “crawl” through or at least look into the pipe rooms and inner workings of some organs.

DanceFusion @ Southampton Cultural Center, a series of performances and interactive events, will present a workshop and performance with Jason Samuels Smith and Jazz Roots Dance Company on Saturday before his performance at the center.

G.E. Smith, a guitar virtuoso and former musical director of “Saturday Night Live,” will conclude his “Portraits” series at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor on Saturday at 8 p.m. with Ethan Hawke, who, in addition to acting, is, “a good musician,” according to Mr. Smith.

Nancy Atlas, the Montauk rocker whose motto is “Live Large and Play Hard,” will perform with her band, the Nancy Atlas Project, tomorrow at 7 p.m. at the Southampton Cultural Center.

On Saturday afternoon at 3, at Guild Hall, Christina Strassfield will interview Elizabeth Strong-Cuevas on the occasion of the publication by Abrams Books of “Strong-Cuevas Sculpture: Premonitions in Retrospect.” The Peter Marcelle Gallery in Southampton will show the work of Jim Gemake beginning Saturday, with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m.

“Of Mice and Men” will be presented this month at the Bay Street Theater as part of its educational program called Literature Live, though adults need not fear that they will be seeing a school production.

Jack Lenor Larsen, the internationally acclaimed textile designer, collector, and founder of LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, has two more honors to add to his extensive resume.

The Southampton Cultural Center will present “Songs of Spheres and Other Autumnal Wonders,” an evening of cabaret with Karen Oberlin, on Saturday at 7 p.m.

The Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor will present a new concert series on Sunday, “Bach, Before and Beyond.” Michael Maliakel, a baritone, will sing music from Bach to Broadway, accompanied by Walter Klauss, the artistic director of the series.

When The Star wrote about Pat DeRosa last year as he was approaching his 93rd birthday, the musician said that just one item remained on his bucket list: “to perform with Long Island’s most popular piano player, Billy Joel.”

Written by one of Great Britain’s foremost men of letters, J.B. Priestley, “An Inspector Calls” is the Hampton Theatre Company’s first production of its 31st season, and a good choice it is. Full of profundity and more twists than a Bimini knot, the play is a riveting revival of an all-time classic.

The Drawing Room in East Hampton will present “Perspectives on Land, Sea, and Sky,” an exhibition of work by Robert Dash, Jane Freilicher, Fairfield Porter, and Jane Wilson, from tomorrow through Dec. 7. The Accabonac Protection Committee will present a show at Ashawagh Hall this weekend called “Images of Accabonac”. The show will celebrate the beauty of Accabonac Harbor and its Springs surroundings.

Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor will throw a Halloween costume ball featuring the HooDoo Loungers and some special friends on Saturday at 8 p.m. Voodoo will be in the air, according to the theater, and the dance floor will be jumping to the music of the nine-piece New Orleans party band.

The Met: Live in HD will present Wagner’s “Tannhauser” in its first return to the Metropolitan Opera stage in more than a decade, on Saturday at noon at Guild Hall. The opera, which premiered in 1845 in Dresden, centers on the struggle between sacred and profane love, and redemption through love.

Guild Hall will present an encore screening of the National Theatre Live production of “Hamlet” on Saturday at 7 p.m.

In a review of a recent BBC adaption of “An Inspector Calls,” The Guardian observed that if, in the play’s final speech, you replace the name of its deceased character Eva with the name of the 3-year old Syrian boy whose body washed up recently on a beach in Greece, the play’s universal themes become even more relevant to the world as we know it today.

Donald Alfano, a classical pianist, will present “Spanish and Latin American Composers,” a free concert, at the Montauk Library on Sunday at 3:30 p.m.

Tomer Gewirtzman, a 2013-2014 Pianofest Distinguished Artist, will make his third appearance at the Southampton Cultural Center as part of its Rising Stars piano series on Saturday at 7 p.m.

Ashawagh Hall in Springs will feature the work of the employees of VJS Studio with a reception from 6 to 10 this Saturday. Mark Borghi Fine Art’s Manhattan will host a group exhibition to benefit Broadway Barks. Broadway Barks provides a safe haven and seeks homes for abandoned animals.

The Parrish Art Museum’s Salon Series will conclude its fall program with a concert by Inna Faliks tomorrow at 6 p.m.

For Anne Chaisson and David Nugent, the executive director and artistic director, respectively, of the Hamptons International Film Festival, this year’s program of more than 140 films seemed to have a common theme — they were thought-provoking and encouraged hard questions.