FUNNY SHORTS LIVE! Returns To Center For Performing Arts Bonita Springs

Freud's mother, asteroids, dinosaurs, curses and a sprite with an identity crisis will all be on display in the eclectic short play collection Funny Shorts LIVE! at Center for Performing Arts Bonita Springs' Moe Auditorium and Film Center, September 13 & 14.

Funny Shorts LIVE! is an extension of the Center's wildly popular Stage IT! 10-Minute Play Festival, an annual competition and book publication that draws playwrights from around the world. With performances scheduled throughout the year, this event will feature playwrights from New York, California, North Carolina, Kentucky, Main and Michigan. Keeping in tune with a new mission of featuring local playwrights, Naples' own Carole Fenstermacher will see her play Amalia and Bobblehead presented with the other comic gems. The play imagines a phone call between Freud and his mother.

New York's Judd Lear Silverman's play In the Wondrous Woods will also be featured along with Kitty Dubin's Cutting It Close and David Beardsely's Every Creeping Thing, about a group of dinosaurs-and one smarmy cockroach-having a climate change meeting as a giant asteroid approaches. Other plays include Teri Folz's Magpie, in which a disgruntled wife finds her own voice and Jonathan Josephson's Runed, a fast-paced caper where someone's going to end up cursed. Josephson, like Silverman, has become a stalwart of the short play genre.

Directors include playwright Fenstermacher, Janina Birtolo, Frank Blocker, Melissa Hennig and Luis Pages. Hennig and Pages also appear as actors alongside Emilie Baartman, Ben Borchmann, Carolyn Bronson, Kevin Buja, Amanda Carrion, Marilyn Hilbert, Kip Jones, Nance Jones, Will Kaiser, Sean Pritchard, Jennifer Valiente, Lorelai Vega and Kristin Voit.

Funny Shorts LIVE! has become a popular hit with area residents, so it is suggested you get your tickets in advance for the two performances. Shows are Friday, September 13, 2019, at 7:30pm and a Saturday matinee, September 14, at 2:00pm. Center for Performing Arts Bonita Springs, Moe Auditorium and Film Center, 10150 Bonita Beach Road, 239-495-8989, www.artcenterbonita.org