‘Funny Shorts LOVE’ perfect pre-Valentine date night
If you are looking for the perfect Friday-before-Valentine date night, the Centers for the Arts Bonita Springs has just the thing. CFABS is presenting Funny Shorts: LOVE!—a live theatre event consisting of six short plays centered around the holiday subject.
The night features work from six playwrights from across the country – performed by an exciting group of local actors that
includes (alphabetically) Emilie Baartman, Joseph Brauer, Patti Caroli, Victor Caroli, Louise Cornetta, Duane Denny, Jen Driggers, Joanne Fritz, Melissa Hennig, Cynthia Hile, Ellen Rodwick and Greg Wojcechowski. The plays will be directed by Rita Meehan, Toni Palumbo, Marilee Warner and the Centers’ Film and Theatre Director Frank Blocker.
Blocker 
curates the Stage It! 10-Minute Play Festival, which has created a pipeline for playwrights to get their plays read, produced and published. Live short plays have become a local audience draw thanks to the wide variety of well-told stories as well as their much-needed comic relief.
The storylines for Funny Shorts: LOVE are as intriguing as they are varied. 
For example, there’s The Last Box, where two strangers with big plans meet in a drug store and discover there’s only one box of protection left. An “audience favorite” at New York short play festivals, The Baggage Handler finds a couple moving on from one life to the next as they contemplate breaking Karmic rules to enhance the next life. And Dance Class highlights a new-retiree’s first foray into a childhood passion and the prospect that she may have found her perfect lead.
The theme of love is further explored in Satisfaction Guaranteed, a story about trying to return a robotic companion. The New Wife explores the best possible way to handle a replacement, and Maude, whose title character is deceased, is visited by her current and former lovers who are seeing each other for the first time since their original awkward meeting.
Performances begin at 7:30 on Friday, February 11 in the Moe Auditorium & Film Center at the Center for Performing Arts, 10150 Bonita Beach Road. Tickets are $20 each.
February 3, 2022.
About the Author
Tom Hall is both an amateur artist and aspiring novelist who writes art quest thrillers. He is in the final stages of completing his debut novel titled "Art Detective," a story that fictionalizes the discovery of the fabled billion-dollar Impressionist collection of Parisian art dealer Josse Bernheim-Jeune, thought by many to have perished during World War II when the collection's hiding place, Castle de Rastignac in southern France, was destroyed by the Wehrmacht in reprisal for attacks made by members of the Resistance operating in the area. A former tax attorney, Tom holds a bachelor's degree as well as both a juris doctorate and masters of laws in taxation from the University of Florida. Tom lives in Estero, Florida with his fiancee, Connie, and their four cats.