Arts

   The Hamptons Theatre Company is holding open auditions for “Other Desert Cities,” a drama by Jon Robin Baitz. The story follows a family gathering at which a controversial memoir threatens to tear the family apart. The auditions will be on Aug. 25 from 2 to 4 p.m., and on Aug. 26 from 6 to 8 p.m., at the Quogue Community Hall on Jessup Avenue.

   The Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival presented a concert called “Captivating Combinations” on July 31 at the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, and true to the usual format of this series, each of the four works on the program had a different combination of instruments, offering varying colors, well coupled with the individual character of each composition.

    The program had solid bookends of Beethoven and Ravel, and a poignant Shostakovich trio and less familiar divertimento by the contemporary New York composer John Musto in the middle.

   Great drama is found, most often, not in the lines the actors speak or in the sound and fury they unleash onstage. No, great drama reveals itself in silence, dreaded silence, when those in the audience peer into the souls of the characters onstage and by doing so look truthfully into their own souls, warts and all.

    More than just warts are revealed in Chad Beguelin’s fine new play, “Harbor,” currently playing at 59E59 Theaters in New York.

   The Old Whalers Church in Sag Harbor will have a Sunday recital this week by Walter Klauss, and next week by John Walker, both at 3 p.m.. The musicians will use the church’s historic 1844 Erben pipe organ.

   Davina Dobie, an artist who grew up in Kenya, will present a screening of the National Geographic film “Battle for the Elephants” at Guild Hall on Saturday, with cocktails at 6:30 p.m. and the screening at 7. The film examines the plight of the African elephant and its decimation from an estimated 10 million in 1900 to under a half million today.

   The Hamptons International Film Festival’s Summer Docs series will continue on Monday with “Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me,” which follows the story of the Broadway legend in a documentary by Chiemi Karasawa. Ms. Stritch, now 87, is shown performing her one-woman cabaret act, torturing Alec Baldwin on “30 Rock,” and speaking about her present and past. (See related story).

    Tickets are $22, $20 for Guild Hall members. More details can be found elsewhere in this section.

    Tomorrow, Guild Hall will hold its Summer Gala in conjunction with the opening of the Chuck Close exhibition at the museum. A cocktail party at the show will be followed by drinks, dinner, and dancing at the Bridgehampton estate of Louise and Leonard Riggio. A live art auction will also be part of the festivities.

    Tickets begin at $500 for the exhibition preview and cocktails, and $1,200 for the entire evening and can be purchased through Guild Hall’s special events department.

“Follow your impulses” was the dogma dished by Simon Doonan during a conversation Sunday in one of the many outdoor gathering nooks at his Shelter Island house on Gardiner’s Bay.

   Sometimes it can be hard to tell when a project or company has reached a tipping point. So often things can appear on the brink of a breakthrough and then fall just short of the last leap.

    This is not the case with Art Intelligence, a relatively recent start-up that takes the best of old school art historical research and marries it to the latest in app technology to create a seamless narrative devoted to some of the more inventive and cross-cultural artists of the past few decades.

   This weekend, Neoteric Fine Art will hold an Amagansett AudioVision festival at its gallery and grounds on Main Street in that hamlet. It will begin Saturday with live music by Thank You Scientist, the Ben Levin Group, and the Montauk Project from 4 to 9 p.m. An exhibition of album cover art and art on vinyl records, “The Vinyl Art Show,” will also be on view then.

    At 10, there will be a “silent disco,” with D.J.s broadcasting music to individual headphone sets during a “laser­mapping” show by Dario Pantosin.

   The Walt Whitman Birthplace Association has named Fran Castan the 2013 Long Island poet of the year. The honor goes to a “nationally known and well-respected poet who champions poetry” through his or her “writing, teaching, and support of the Long Island community of poets,” the association said in a release.

    An induction ceremony, reading, and reception will take place on Sept. 29 at 2 p.m. at the association’s home at 246 Old Walt Whitman Road in Huntington Station.

    “Summer Roses III,” a classical and operatic recital, will be given on Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Southampton Cultural Center. Sarah Moulton Faux, a soprano, and Junko Ohtsu, a violinist, will perform works by Paganini, Mozart, Schubert, Strauss, Puccini, and Donizetti.

    Ms. Ohtsu has been featured as a soloist with orchestras such as the St. Louis Symphony and the Aspen Music Festival Orchestra. Ms. Faux made her operatic debut at the age of 12 with the Opera of the Hamptons. She has also appeared with the New York City Opera and the Pocket Opera of New York.

   The Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill will continue its summer music series, East End or Busk, tomorrow from 5 to 8 p.m. with the eclectic and electric violinist Lorenzo Laroc. A D.J. will accompany him on the terrace, and food and beverages will be provided by the Art of Eating.

    Admission is included in the $10 museum ticket price.

    Tomorrow, Guild Hall and the East Hampton Historical Society will present “The Sound of Music” outdoors at Mulford Farm. With music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, the classic 1965 film won five Academy Awards. Admission is $5, free for those 5 and under. The start time is 8 p.m.

   The Sylvester Manor Farmers will gather for a summer contra dance on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. The band DuneGrass, with Dave Harver as caller, will lead the traditional barn dancing with fiddles, mandolins, and old-time calls. This musical event for the whole family will take place on the lawn of Sylvester Manor, at 80 North Ferry Road on Shelter Island. Admission is $10, and $5 for students.

Hanging Art to Dry

    Guild Hall’s annual Clothesline Art Sale happens on Saturday, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The annual event, which dates from 1946, features the work of nearly 400 artists and always attracts mobs of interested browsers and beginning collectors.

    Prices range from $50 to $2,000, with all proceeds split evenly between the artist and Guild Hall. The event is free.

New at the Fireplace

    Guild Hall will present “Fashion Insiders With Fern Mallis: Nicole Miller” on Sunday at 11 a.m. to mark the beginning of a series in which Ms. Mallis will explore the fashion industry with the people who know it best.

   The Parrish Art Museum’s Jazz en Plein Air series will resume tomorrow with the Richie Siegler Quartet’s jazz with Brazilian and Latin influences. Mr. Siegler is the founding director of Escola de Samba Boom, a 50-member percussion group that plays Brazilian music.

Art Southampton is back in its second edition at the Elks Lodge in a tent that boasts 100,000 running feet of exhibition space.

   Thirty years ago, almost as a means of self-preservation, Marya Martin founded the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival.

    Soon after her marriage, the flutist embarked on the summer festival circuit, an annual cross-country pilgrimage that required she leave her new husband, Ken Davidson, a businessman, for eight weeks at a stretch. Dissatisfied with spending so much time apart, the couple decided to start their own festival a bit closer to home.

    On Wednesday at the Montauk Library, Janice Friedman, a singer and pianist, will perform favorites from the American Songbook, several Brazilian tunes, pop songs from the 1960s and 1970s, and her own compositions.

    Her piano playing “carries the aura and variety of a big band,” The New York Times wrote. She has performed at jazz clubs and concert halls across the country, including Carnegie Hall. The free event will run from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m.

   “A Hundred Miles to the End,” a film by John Beattie that captures surf culture from Long Beach to Montauk, will be screened at Solé East on Second House Road in Montauk on Sunday as part of Smash Fest 1, a series of happenings from Brooklyn to Montauk showcasing surf films and art.

    The film, which includes some of the area’s best surfers, follows Mr. Beattie, who suffered a debilitating stroke that denied him his own passion for the sport and lifestyle, as he visits surfing communities “to reconnect with his passion,” according to smashsurf.com.

Feeling Jazzy

    The East Hampton Historical Society will hold an opening reception for its new exhibition, “Jazz Age East Hampton (1919-1933): Clothes, Clubs, and Contraband,” from 5 to 7 p.m. tomorrow. It will open to the public on Saturday and be up through Oct. 13.

   The Hamptons International Film Festival’s SummerDocs series will continue in August with two more films: “Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me” on Aug. 12 and “The Short Game” on Aug. 30.

    “Shoot Me” looks at Ms. Stritch, an 87-year-old Broadway veteran who was seen recently as Alec Baldwin’s mother on the television series “30 Rock.” The film features her friends Nathan Lane, George C. Wolfe, Hal Prince, Cherry Jones, Tina Fey, James Gandolfini, and John Turturro. It is scheduled for release next year.

   It’s going to be a great summer for those interested in classical music. The Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival will celebrate its 30th anniversary with 11 concerts throughout July and August.

    The festival, founded by Marya Martin, is Long Island’s longest-running classical music event. It will feature a new composition commissioned from Kevin Puts, the 2012 Pulitzer Prize-winner in music; collaborations with Pablo Ziegler and Stephane Wrembel, BachBrandenburgs and all-Mozart, and an opening night of tango music, “Buenos Aires to Bridgehampton.”

    It wasn’t necessary to go to the jammed opening-night festivities at ArtHamptons and artMRKT Hamptons to grasp that the fairs may have finally “arrived,” despite the continued lack of attention from A-list galleries and dealers.

    That sense was just as apparent at the smaller events that were held in tandem with the Bridgehampton fairs, where a hint of that Art Basel Miami Beach cross-pollination, which has spawned a thousand satellites over the years, was in the air and could be a harbinger of what’s to come here in future years.

   Freddy Cole, a jazz pianist and vocalist The New York Times called “the most maturely expressive male jazz singer of his generation, if not the best alive,” is coming to perform four dinner shows at the Dory on Shelter Island. Dinner-and-show seatings are available for $75 on Monday and Tuesday at 6 and 8:30 p.m.

    Although absent from the Main Street scene of Southampton Village for some time, Stephan Keszler is back at the old power plant on North Sea Road, where he presented the street artist Banksy in 2011.

    Back then, the property was extremely raw and reminiscent of the untouched gallery spaces in old warehouses and facilities in Manhattan’s West Chelsea. It has been cleaned up a lot as the new Keszler Annex, but the interior retains the industrial feel that made it an ideal backdrop for the gritty and controversial wall pieces of Banksy.

   The Southampton Center, a new arts and cultural center at 25 Job’s Lane in Southampton Village, has announced a schedule of free programs to be presented throughout the rest of the summer. It will include movie showings, visual art presentations, live concerts, dance performances, interactive educational workshops, and children’s programs such as the Goat on a Boat Puppet Theatre.

   Dick Cavett will read the leading role of Len in Joni Fritz’s “In the Car with Blossom and Len” on July 29 at Guild Hall. Lynne Taylor-Corbett will direct. Proceeds of the reading will benefit the Alzheimer’s Association. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased at brownpapertickets.com.

At Guild Hall

    On Saturday at 4 p.m., John Alexander will speak about his work at Guild Hall. An interview with the artist appears on C1.