Nantucket Arts Festival Highlights

Some highlights of the Nantucket Arts Festival coming up this week:

Last Call is a film by local filmmaker John Stanton about The Bosun’s Locker, a Main Street bar and meeting place that closed in 1970, as a watershed event for major changes to come for Nantucket.

She & He is a 12-minute short, based on the play of the same name, which won 1st prize at the 2005 Nantucket Short Play Festival and will be included in this year’s Los Angeles Film Festival. The short was adapted for screen and directed by islander Greg Bourbeau. In it, a older New York couple discovers what love means to them by remembering their lives together, and admitting to each other for the first time disturbing details of their relationship. Also showing is In the Can: The Making of She & He, an often comical look at the process of making a first film

Last Call and She & He play all this week on alternating days at the Starlight at 1 pm: Last Call on Monday, Wednesday and Friday; She & He on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Local rock group The Undergraduates plays Cambridge Street Victuals Wednesday (3rd) beginning around 10 pm.

Twelfth Night has been reprised by Nantucket’s own Seaside Shakespeare Company, from the Nantucket Arts Council’s 2007 Shakespeare Festival. Set in exotic Illyria and its neighboring seacoast, this play is replete with love, music, jesters, royalty and even a shipwreck. Original score composed by Kim D. Sherman. Thursday and Friday (4th and 5th) at 5 pm at the Unitarian Church.

A unique event at the Ships Inn this week: An Evening with the Artist William Welch. The Ships Inn has the largest collection of Bill Welch’s art on Nantucket, and Bill will be there to answer questions, offering commentary, and just be Bill. Thursday (4th) beginning at 6:00 pm.

OK, here’s something I guanantee that you haven’t heard before: Mira Lakostova and Billy Desmond: Bulgarian Opera with Hip-Hop. It’s part of live&local, the music series of the Festival. Thursday (4th) at 7:00 pm at the Preservation Institute.

And this is the final week of I’ll Be Back Before Midnight presented by the Theatre Workshop of Nantucket, a murder mystery comedy thriller by Peter Colley, and directed by Fritz Michel. Thursday through Sunday (3rd - 6th), 8:30 pm at the Methodist Church.

I’ll have the weekend update later in the week.

For additional details on these events and many more events, click to the Arts and Social Calendar, and the online Nantucket Arts Festival Program.