Longtime Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse artistic and executive director MJ Bruder Munafo announced this week that she will retire at the end of December after more than 40 years with the nonprofit theatre, with 30 of them in the top job.
Longtime Martha’s Vineyard Playhouse artistic and executive director MJ Bruder Munafo announced this week that she will retire at the end of December after more than 40 years with the nonprofit theatre, with 30 of them in the top job.
“She’s going to be dearly missed. I have loved what she has done with the playhouse,” said Dr. Gerald Yukevich, who chairs the theatre’s board.
After first joining the playhouse as a cast member in her 20s, Ms. Bruder Munafo went on to stage-manage and direct productions when it was still a seasonal theatre.
Since 1995, when she took on the executive director position, the playhouse on Vineyard Haven’s Church street has grown to become a year-round venue, a community gathering place and a force in the development of contemporary drama, staging more than a dozen world premieres and hosting sold-out readings of new plays.
Screen actor and playwright Amy Brenneman, who has taken part in several readings for the playhouse, praised Ms. Bruder Munafo’s dedication and artistry.
“MJ is one of the most supportive, visionary and hard-working theatre leaders I’ve ever come across,” Ms. Brenneman told the Gazette by email. “She has helmed the playhouse with joy, talent and grit for years, creating an artistic home that is defined by excellence and belonging. I am so grateful for all her support.”
Originally from the coastal New Jersey town of Sea Bright, Ms. Bruder Munafo was a newcomer to theatre when she moved to the Vineyard at age 19, after visiting the Island on a long-distance bicycle trip two years earlier.
“I loved it so much when we came here,” she recalled in an interview this week at the playhouse. “I had to go back and graduate from high school, but I never stopped thinking about Martha’s Vineyard.”
Directing Maker's Mark in 2011.
Directing Maker's Mark in 2011.
Arriving in 1975, she worked the usual assortment of Island jobs including at old Cranberry Acres campground, which she called “a mini-Woodstock.”
One of her first winter gigs was at Alley’s General Store, working with John, Phyllis and Jim Alley. A position at an insurance company provided a bit more stability and she began exploring the Island’s theatre community — beginning with a show in a nightclub.
“I fell in love with theatre doing the props for Guys and Dolls at the Hot Tin Roof,” she said.
She also worked on a local production of the parody musical Little Mary Sunshine.
“That was the first show I, quote unquote, produced,” she said.
It’s also where she met her future husband Paul Munafo, who auditioned and won a part. Mr. Munafo became a playhouse mainstay over the decades, appearing as an actor and singer in multiple productions and using his handyman skills to build sets, hang artwork in the lobby gallery and perform countless other tasks.
The playhouse was founded in 1982 by two summer residents from Connecticut, and Ms. Bruder Munafo made her way there just two years later when she auditioned for a part in William Inge’s Bus Stop alongside two other actresses in their 20s. She won the sole role meant for an older woman.
“I was playing the washed-up diner owner,” recalled Ms. Bruder Munafo, who found her mentor in the play’s director, playhouse co-founder Eileen Wilson.
“Eileen really taught me so much,” she recalled. “She had a big heart and a lot of fun doing this and it really did seem like if we were going to put on plays that there should be some joy in that.”
Ms. Bruder Munafo was hired as a part-time manager for the theatre after two years as a busy volunteer.
Stage-managing gave her a firsthand look at how Ms. Wilson and other directors worked. She began her own directing career with productions of Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour and Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold” ... and the Boys.
In 2005, with John Robichau and Becky Williams.
In 2005, with John Robichau and Becky Williams.
Over the years, Ms. Bruder Munafo has performed nearly every other off-stage role required to keep the community theatre thriving, from set design to finance and fundraising.
“I learned everything from the ground on up,” with the sole exception of lighting design, she said.
Ms. Bruder Munafo deferred her formal theatre education until daughter Jenik went off to college in the 1990s. While Jenik attended Bennington College in Vermont, Ms. Bruder Munafo commuted to the Harvard Extension School in Cambridge for a degree in drama, studying Shakespeare and other playwrights in depth for the first time.
“It was a wonderful education,” she said.
While she delved into classical drama at Harvard, the playhouse took a decidedly modern turn under her artistic direction, in collaboration with the late playwright, director and educator Jonathan Lipsky.
“We started to develop a lot of new work [and] that’s become a hallmark of what we’ve been doing,” she said.
The financial crisis that began in 2008 could have ended the playhouse’s momentum, Ms. Bruder Munafo recalled.
“In 2010, we were struggling and the building was falling apart,” she said. “It’s very hard to keep a small arts institution going. Some years we don’t have the money; some years we don’t have the staff.”
She and playhouse supporters, including Dr. Yukevich, Mr. Munafo and Jim Glavin, resolved to persevere.
“We launched a campaign and raised the money and restored and renovated the whole building,” she said.
The $2.5 million restoration was completed in 2014, and made it possible for the playhouse to become a year-round operation, with off-season entertainment brainstormed by Ms. Bruder Munafo and a host of community collaborators: classic movies on Monday night, curated by Jamie Alley; the Wicked Good Music Revues produced by singer Molly Conole; Jenny Allen’s theatre trivia nights and the Poetry Café, founded by the late Arnie Reisman.
The refurbished main stage, on the building’s second floor, is named in honor of Academy Award-winning actress Patricia Neal, who often attended shows at the playhouse and always made a point of staying to greet the cast after each performance, Ms. Bruder Munafo said.
In 2009, the year before she died, Ms. Neal gave a one-night-only performance of her solo stage memoir As I Am to benefit the playhouse. A photograph of the actress now greets audiences entering the second-floor theatre.
“[She] was beloved by me and by all of us at the playhouse,” Ms. Bruder Munafo said.
A lasting legacy.
A lasting legacy.
The playhouse deepened its community involvement through a partnership with the Vineyard Independence Partnership (VIP), a social and advocacy group for Islanders with disabilities along with their families and allies. Ms. Bruder Munafo connected with the organization after becoming good friends with the late Virginia Hackney, a lively and affectionate Vineyard Haven resident with developmental challenges who was fascinated with the playhouse.
“I always wanted to start a group with adults of different abilities,” Ms. Bruder Munafo said.
She collaborated with longtime VIP supporters Mary Beth Grady and Allison Burger to start Virginia’s Drama Club, a long-running theatre workshop class named in Ms. Hackney’s honor.
“She’s taught us a lot about acting and she’s really been there for us,” said VIP co-president Dale Ferry.
Several VIP members work at the playhouse as well, including production and administrative assistant JP Hitesman — Mr. Ferry’s co-president — and administrative assistant Laura Jahn, who saluted Ms. Bruder Munafo’s leadership.
“In terms of local cultural identity, she’s done so much,” said Ms. Jahn. “I hope she’ll have more time for herself now, because she has given so much of it to the playhouse and the community.”
Ms. Bruder Munafo herself had no firm plans to share at press time, telling the Gazette she’d like to do some traveling but that the Vineyard will always be home.
She also hasn’t ruled out returning to the playhouse as a volunteer behind the scenes, where she first found her calling.
“I’m a director. I don’t like the spotlight on me,” she said.
Dr. Yukevich said the playhouse board is not quite ready to go public about Ms. Bruder Munafo’s replacement.
“If people can just be patient... we’ll have a wonderful announcement to make,” he said.
Comments
Among MJ's many
Harry Seymour OBAmong MJ's many accomplishments and contributions to the Island, the Playhouse Art Gallery also stands out. This gem of an artist space offers a wonderful opportunity for local artists to show their work free from the typical business restrictions associated with commercial gallery exposure. The simultaneous coordination of visual art concurrent with theatrical plays produced a richly compelling artistic experience for all Islanders. This is to her credit, as is her conscious attempt to ensure diversity and social justice within the seasonal programming. In fact, as one of her showing artists, and at a time when I had stopped showing my work publicly, MJ persuasively convinced this very reluctant artist to have a second show at the Playhouse. The outcome was the most successful show of my career and, I gather, of the Playhouse as well. Thank you, MJ.
I have had the pleasure of
David Vigneault EdgartownI have had the pleasure of witnessing firsthand MJ's extraordinary efforts to incude the widest range of members of our community in Playhouse performamces, events, acting workshops and the hosting of art shows, meetings and more. Her long, personal relationships included acts of support and advocay which, in one very special friendship, brought a life-long Vineyarder back to her birthplace for the last weeks of life. MJ and others filled that then new hospital room, with its view across the Lagoon to the woman's childhood neighborhood, with laughter, song, and rememberance. Only one very personal memory of MJ's wide use of a true community theater to serve in larger, more essential ways in our shared Island life.
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