Be Bold! Reveals Week Two Winner Of SPF LUV 2026 Short Play Festival 

Week Two of Be Bold! Productions' 14th annual Players Theatre Short Play Festival LUV ran last weekend at The Players Theatre in the West Village, romancing audiences with bite-size plays focusing on love in a variety of forms. Each weekend for three weeks in February, a new selection of 15-minute original plays premieres, embracing the official month of love.

Last weekend's audience-selected winner was "Hook, Line and Sinker", written by Kristen Evans and directed by Marina Barry.

When old friends Phil (Bill Barry) and Frank (Jordan Auslander) meet up for a day of fishing, they soon discover that though they've been friends for years, they hardly know each other at all. Each learns that their wives cheated on them with the other, that neither one of them has caught a fish in the last eight seasons they have been meeting up, and that one of them has been attending the nudist camp down the street. Combined with a surprise goose attack, these two friends are forced to redefine their friendship.

"Hook, Line and Sinker" appeared alongside four other love-themed short plays.

"The Late Lovers", written and directed by Julia Genoveva, featured Nancy (Regina Yeager) and Robert (Peter Quinones), a couple pursuing love at a later, more mature stage of life (i.e., not as 20 or 30-somethings). In their previous relationships they have been though the pain of loss and divorce. Now they must take a shaky leap of faith in order to see if they can find love and happiness.

"Ramifications.com", written by Alex Berstein and directed by Giovanni Sandoval, introduced romantic hopeful Doug (Jonathan Castro), who has logged onto the website Ramifications to find out if he should try to date his friend Susie. He is assisted by Kris (Bridgette Dove), an A.I. assistant who offers to predict how things will turn out for Doug - for a price. Once Doug agrees to the price, he is shocked at the ramifications a date with Susie would have on his life and the lives around him.

"Invitation", written by Bruce Deveau and directed by RJ VerChaud, invited audiences back to Greenwich Village, 1957, where a love triangle between Florence (Rose Meehan), Lewis (Jay Lamar), and Lenny (William King Barnett) has just officially formed with Florence accepting Lewis's marriage proposal. Lenny is jealous, but Lewis is quick to point out to Lenny that he is married to a woman. The three ponder the question of whether a person can intimately love two people at once and acknowledge that pain and love are a part of life.

"Old Flames", written by Riley Fee and directed by Tanner Bolin, took audiences inside a senior care home, where Hank (Riley Fee) and Evelyn (Kathryn Loggins) were being forced to share a room while a flooding issue had made half the rooms in the home uninhabitable. Unfortunately, the two did not get along, and nearly came to blows over things such as the crossword puzzle from the paper and a Jello cup. Care home attendant Alex (Julian Guzman Abril) eventually began to treat the warring couple like children, dividing the room. This, of course, drew them together, and they found that there might just be a little love left in their hearts after all.