Montauk Playhouse FamilyFest

The Montauk Playhouse is hoping to add another tradition this summer to the building’s storied history with its first FamilyFest, a four-part summer series featuring some local talent aimed at commanding the attention of younger audiences as well as their parents.

With no theater in the Tudor style building, the playhouse will use the gymnasium to spotlight a slam dunk basketball show, acrobats, a musical group that uses garbage to fashion instruments and a performance of “Peter and the Wolf” by the Hampton Ballet Theatre School and the Hampton Chamber Orchestra.

“We’re moving in the direction of having a theater,” said Maureen Rutkowski, project director for the Montauk Playhouse Community Center Foundation. “With the FamilyFest program, we’re kind of filling in a niche that had been empty.”

The theater school and orchestra already performed “Peter and the Wolf” last year at the playhouse, but this year the show will include new choreography, new costumes and a new cast featuring some local actors between the ages of 4 and 8 hailing from Bridgehampton, Southampton and Montauk, among other areas.

Montauk’s own Maggie Ryan, 10, will play the Cat in this year’s production and her sister Emily, 4, will play a hunter.

“Cats are something she definitely has a personal affinity for,” said David Ryan, the girls’ father. He recalls Maggie wearing black cat ears to school in kindergarten, recalling factoids from Animal Planet’s “Cats 101” and, during last year’s “Peter and the Wolf,” memorizing pieces of the Cat’s choreography.

“Like ‘The Nutcracker,’ ‘Peter And The Wolf’ is a learning ballet because the kids start at the bottom as hunters and then they move up,” said Sara Jo Strickland, founding artistic director for the ballet company based in Bridgehampton. She travels out to Montauk one day per week to give lessons.

She describes the technique as “a progression of learning” as students mature and can handle larger roles.

The popular production is often chosen to introduce a younger generation to classical music because it combines orchestral music with a story line and repetition of musical themes designed to hold the attention of a younger crowd.

Last year the show was narrated by Julianne Moore and this year’s July 29 production will also feature a celebrity guest.

The four-part series will kick off Thursday, July 22, with “Bash the Trash: Family Bash and Recycling Remix,” a group of musicians who use garbage to create music. “It’s not just them smacking a water bottle and getting a drum sound out of it,” Ms. Rutkowski said. “They are producing beautiful sounds out of garbage.”

The performance will also include an opportunity for the audience to construct their own instruments out of recycled and reused materials.

The program is sponsored by Concerned Citizens of Montauk. “I think everyone should realize that to benefit our Earth we need to be aware of the effects that we have on the earth and if we can reduce, reuse, recycle, we should,” Ms. Rutkowski said.

The program moves into August with two events the playhouse hopes will tear up the gym floor.

The Extreme Team will bring a night of trampoline slam dunk basketball to the court August 5. Combining gymnasts, tumblers and trampoline specialists, the group mixes flips, dunks and comedic antics together in a 30-minute show. Ms. Rutkowski hopes to pique the interest of young males with this act.

Located across from the train station, the structure was first built as the Montauk Tennis Auditorium by Carl Fisher who hoped to turn the area into a destination resort that included the Montauk polo, yacht and surf clubs.

“We all know a bit of Carl Fisher’s history and he wanted this to be sort of a Miami Beach of the north,” Ms. Rutkowski said.

According to local legend, at its completion in 1929, the structure was the largest tennis spectator venue of its kind in the world.

The estimated price tag was $125,000 for the building that originally housed two tennis courts and could accommodate seating for 6,000.

But the stockmarket crash of 1929 hurt Mr. Fisher’s wallet and the 1938 hurricane is said to have damaged the roof. The United States Navy used the facility for operational and recreational purposes during World War II.

Acting was first brought to the building in 1959 by TV personality Herb Sheldon, who opened a summer stock theater. Around this time the name of the building was changed to Montauk Manor Playhouse.

But the building again fell into disrepair after ownership changes and in 1999 was donated along with the 4.4 acres it sits on to the Town of East Hampton, which began a restoration process at the site.

The summer series ends on August 12 with the Jabali Acrobats from Kenya, who can be seen performing regularly at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando.

“The beauty of it is the building is just over 80 years old,” Ms. Rutkowski said. “Maybe through this it grew into the life that Carl Fisher had envisioned. People are in there using it every day.”

Montauk Playhouse is located at 240 Edgemere Street in Montauk. Individual tickets are $15 per person per performance or an individual series subscription, with limited availability, can be purchased for $50. All performances start at 7 p.m. Tickets can be purchased in Montauk at Willow, 41 The Plaza or Joni’s, 9 Edison Drive, online at montaukplayhouse.org or by calling 668-1124.