Arts

    The absence of traditional subject matter was a primary issue for painters in mid-20th century America; it was also a problem for those struggling to understand modern art. Helen Harrison will discuss “The Subject Matter of the Artist: Writings by Robert Goodnough, 1950-1965,” on Oct. 19 at 2:30 p.m., at the East Hampton Library.

    Three minutes into Michael Walker’s film “The Maid’s Room,” Drina, a young, undocumented immigrant from Colombia, arrives in the Hamptons for a summer job as a maid for a wealthy white couple with a teenage son. The Lobster Grille Inn and Main Street in Southampton make fleeting appearances before Drina and her boyfriend arrive at an imposingly gated property. “It’s Drina. The maid. Remember?” she says nervously to the speakerphone. The gates open, and the drive leads to the Crawfords’ sprawling home.

    Scott Cuellar, an award-winning Juilliard pianist, will perform on Sunday at 8 p.m. at the Shelter Island Presbyterian Church. The program, organized by the Shelter Island Friends of Music, includes work by Haydn, Fauré, Scriabin, and Schumann.

    Mr. Cuellar, who holds a degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, has performed nationwide and collected awards in over 15 competitions. In April he won the Virginia Waring International Piano Competition, a major event held every two years in Palm Desert, Calif.

    Admission is free.

    The opening, closing, centerpiece, and spotlight films may get all the attention, but the movies people talk about online, the ones that may not get major distribution but are singular and captivating as well, are the ones that define a film festival and make it memorable. The Star staff previewed a handful of these films to see whether each was worthy of some non-spotlight attention. They are a rich field of local, national, and international subjects, from short to feature length.

“Big Shot”

Kevin Connolly

East Hampton, Saturday, 3 p.m.

    Guild Hall, in partnership with the Round Table Theatre Company and Academy, will offer a classical acting course, “Speaking Shakespeare,” on seven consecutive Mondays from 6 to 9 p.m., starting on Oct. 21. Students age 16 and up will work on sonnets, monologues, mask work, and scene work, culminating in a performance on the stage of the John Drew Theater on Dec. 4.

    When Eric Steel read an obituary in The New York Times for Megan Boyd, a Scottish woman whose expertise at tying fishing flies earned her a British Empire Medal from Queen Elizabeth, he cut it out and pinned it on his bulletin board.

Addams in Southampton

    “Charles Addams: Family and Friends,” an exhibition celebrating the artwork of the creator of the Addams Family, has opened at the Southampton Center, where it will remain on view through Nov. 3. The show features almost 100 drawings and cartoons from a 60-year period.

    Beatty Cohen, a psychotherapist, sex therapist, columnist, and radio host, will tell audiences how to “Rate Your Mate Before It’s Too Late & Never Make a Mistake in Love Again!” on Saturday at 1 p.m. at the East Hampton Library.

    Ms. Cohen is the author, with her husband, Elliot, of “For Better, for Worse, Forever: Discover the Path to Lasting Love,” and hosts  “Ask Beatty” on the Progressive Radio Network. With more than 35 years of clinical experience, she practices in Manhattan, East Hampton, and Sarasota, Fla.

    The Watermill Center is presenting a weekend of screenings starting tomorrow at 4:15 p.m., when the Hamptons International Film Festival will show Katharina Otto-Bernstein’s “Absolute Wilson,” a portrait of the center’s founder and artistic director, Robert Wilson, at the East Hampton Cinema. The film will be screened again, at 4 on Saturday, at the center itself, where it will be followed by a conversation between the filmmaker and Dr. Frank Hentschker, executive director of the City University’s Martin E. Segal Theatre Center in Manhattan.

   “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune” opens tonight at 8 p. m. at the Bridge, the “black box” stage at the Bridgehampton Community Center. It is being produced by the Hamptons International Theater Festival and the Naked Stage.

    First produced in 1987 Off-Broadway, it is considered one of Terrence McNally’s finest plays, a boy-meets-girl story with a theatrical twist. Both middle-aged, Johnny, played in this production by Seth Hendricks, believes he has found his soul mate in Frankie (Rachel Feldman), while she is more than skeptical.

   Crossroads Music, the shop at Amagansett Square offering instrument sales and repairs as well as lessons, has long been a nexus for the South Fork’s thriving community of musicians and singers. From coffeehouse-type performances and open jam sessions to the “On the Air” events, in which Cynthia Daniels, a Grammy Award-winning producer and engineer, recorded ensembles for later broadcast, the shop has proven an invaluable resource for musicians.

    LTV and the East Hampton Historical Society will host a free reception and screening of an archival film today from 5 to 7 p.m. at 75 Industrial Road in Wainscott.

     “East Hampton in the 20s & 30s,” a portrait of life in East Hampton 86 years ago, will be followed by a debate on the topic of preservation by East Hampton Town Board candidates. A wine reception will precede the film and panel discussion.

    East End Arts has announced an open call for singers to participate in the 27th annual Harvest Gospel Choir this fall.

    Led by Maryanne McElroy, the choir brings more than 70 singers and guest soloists together in a nondenominational celebration of the joy of music. No auditions are required, but singers must be available for all four rehearsals and three performances. Participants can register at the first rehearsal, Oct. 19, 6 to 9 p.m., at the Friendship Baptist Church in Flanders. More information is available from eastendarts.org or by calling 727-0900.

    “Witches of East End,” inspired by Melissa de la Cruz’s best-selling novel of the same name, will premiere on the Lifetime channel on Sunday at 10 p.m. The series centers on the Beauchamp family, Joanna and her daughters, Freya and Ingrid, who live in the secluded seaside town of North Hampton.

    Although the author has visited the South Fork, lived on Shelter Island, and written a young-adult novel about au pairs here, the series, at least in its first episode, is not overtly tied to the Hamptons except in name. It was shot on location in Wilmington, N.C.

    Trailers and cranes, generators and boom lights, miles of cable and legions of production assistants are a common sight on the streets of Manhattan. While the South Fork has seen its share of one or two-trailer photo shoots, full-scale film production is less common, especially in such relatively unspoiled locations as the narrow lanes that crisscross the dunes of Amagansett.

    Anthony Molinaro, a first-prize winner of the Naumberg piano competition, will perform on Saturday at 7 p.m. at the Levitas Center for the Arts at the Southampton Cultural Center as part of the Rising Stars piano series 10th anniversary celebration.

    “How many times are you not going to see the Salinger movie?”

    “Every day and twice on Sunday, until it goes away.”

Deadline Extended

    The deadline for submissions to the Retreat’s juried art show has been extended to next Thursday. The top 25 entries will be featured in a group show at the Richard J. Demato Fine Art Gallery in Sag Harbor on Nov. 9.

    All of the submission fees will benefit the Retreat, a nonprofit domestic violence agency in East Hampton. The Web site for more information is hamptonsjuriedartshow.com.

Peconic at Ashawagh

    Tchaikovsky’s opera “Eugene Onegin,” which opened the season at the Metropolitan Opera, will launch the 2013-14 series of live HD performances at Guild Hall on Saturday at 1 p.m. Anna Netrebko and Mariusz Kwiecien star as the love-struck Tatiana and the imperious Onegin in Tchaikovsky’s fateful romance. Deborah Warner’s new production, set in the late 19th century, moves episodically from farmhouse to ballroom, with a powerful snowstorm providing the dramatic setting for the finale. The Russian maestro Valery Gergiev conducts.

   The streets of Sag Harbor and Southampton will be alive with music this weekend, with both the Sag Harbor American Music Festival and South­ampton’s SeptemberFest in store.

   In Sag Harbor, it all starts tomorrow night with a fund-raising concert at the Old Whalers Church by BeauSoleil Avec Michael Doucet, a Grammy Award-winning Cajun and folk band. The concert starts at 8 p.m., but doors will open at 7. General admission tickets are $25 and can be purchased through the festival’s Web site, sagharbormusic.org.

   J.B. D’Santos will direct “Barbershop, Broadway, and Beyond,” a performance of show tunes, old favorites, and original music sure to have the audience singing along, tomorrow at 8 p.m. at the former Stella Maris School in Sag Harbor.

   On Columbus Day weekend, Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theatre will present Betty Buckley in “The Vixens of Broadway.”

   Always popular, Ms. Buckley’s shows typically sell out. In this one, at 8 p.m. on Oct. 12, she will present songs from both classic and contemporary Broadway shows. She has starred in such Broadway productions as “Cats,” “Sunset Boulevard,” and “Pippin” and has won a number of awards.

    Tickets, available now at the box office or at baystreet.org, are $50 to $75, with $100 V.I.P. tickets including an after-party with Ms. Buckley.

   On Memorial Day 2011, Fran Castan wrote searingly in this newspaper of the death of her first husband, the Look magazine war correspondent Sam Castan, killed by enemy fire in the highlands of Vietnam, just an hour’s plane ride away from their apartment in Hong Kong. Traumatized, she fled the British colony, where they had happily settled short months before, and returned to the United States, carrying their 13-month-old toddler and a weight of buried memories that would surface many years later in her award-winning poetry. Last month, in recognition of ongoing achievement, Ms.

    Tickets for the Hamptons International Film Festival will be available starting tomorrow for purchase online. The festival will run from Oct. 10 to Oct 14.

   At press time, the festival had only released the names of the opening, closing, and centerpiece films as well as the Views From Long Island titles.

   “Kill Your Darlings,” a film by John Krokidas, will be shown on opening night. It is based on the life of the poet Allen Ginsberg and a pivotal year in his creative development. The director and star, Dane DeHaan, will attend the screening.

   Mark Allen, the founder and director of the Machine Project, a Los Angeles-based cultural organization that organizes “vacations for plants, concerts for dentists, and car theft workshops for children” from an Echo Park storefront, will speak about the group on Saturday at 11:30 a.m. at the Parrish Art Museum. Its aim is to investigate art, technology, natural history, science, music, literature, and food in an offbeat and creative manner, in diverse settings such as beaches, museums, and parking lots.

   Bach & Forth, an ensemble of four instrumentalists and a soprano, will open its second season here at 7 p.m. Saturday at the East Hampton Presbyterian Church. The members of the quintet are Trudy Craney, a soprano who has a house in Springs, Thomas Bohlert, the music director of the church, organ and piano, Linda DiMartino Wetherill, flute, Rebecca Perea, cello, and Terry Keevil, oboe.

Guild Hall, Parrish

Free on Saturday

    Guild Hall and the Parrish Art Museum will allow patrons with a Museum Day Live! ticket free access on Saturday during regular business hours. The program, sponsored by Smithsonian magazine, is in its ninth year. Last year’s event drew over 400,000 participants nationwide, and this year’s expects record-high participation.

   Corky Laing, legendary rock ’n’ roll drummer and resident of Greenport, will return to the Bay Street Theatre on Saturday at 8 p.m. to perform “Heavy Metal Humor,” a one-man show that draws on his half-century as an entertainer.

    Mr. Laing, best known for his tenure in the group Mountain, performed his show, “The Best Seat in the House,” at Bay Street on May 18. His return engagement comes on the heels of two sold-out performances on Nantucket.

   The Hamptons Take 2 Documentary Film Festival will present “The Loving Story” as a special event on Sunday at 4 p.m. The screening, at the Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor, anticipates the festival’s annual event, scheduled for Dec. 6 to 8 this year.

   The Montauk Library will host “Classical Works for Piano,” with the pianist Anne Tedesco, on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. The program will feature works by Grieg, Brahms, Schumann, Ravel, Mozart, Chopin, and Chabrier. 

    Ms. Tedesco is an adjunct professor  of music at St. John’s University, where she has taught music history, theory, classical piano, and fine arts since 1982. A Long Island native, she lives part-time in Montauk with her husband, Carmine Tedesco. She has a master’s degree in piano performance from the Manhattan School of Music.