Funny Shorts LIVE!
That’s five 10-minute comedy plays (now 6!) starring Frank Blocker and Melissa Hennig, directed by Janina Birtolo:
The Third Person by Dan Borengasser
That’s Amore by Arnold Kane (bonus play!)
The Next Ivan Sheransky by Jim Geoghan
Pre-Code by Craig Gustafson
Mime Stop by Steven San Luis
Stain by Oded Gross
At Off-Broadway Palm Theatre in Fort Myers, 1380 Colonial Blvd
June 27 at 7:30pm
June 28 at 2:00pm
June 28 at 7:30pm
PERFORMER BIOS
Melissa Hennig (Karen, Ida, Verna, Customer, Dave) is excited to be sharing the stage with Frank, who is responsible for getting her back on stage in 2017 after a twenty-year hiatus. Even though her only other acting credits prior were the Miller in Rumpelstiltskin in the fourth grade, and a summer of scripted bird shows in 1997, as a child, she played endless rounds of charades and “Make Me Laugh” with her three siblings and dreamed of becoming the next Carol Burnett. The same biology degree that qualified her to care for captive hawks and falcons brought her to Naples for an internship with The Conservancy of Southwest Florida, where she met and married her husband of twenty-five years. Together they have one son. Melissa now works for Collier County government where she has been with the Conservation Collier Program for more than twenty years. Instead of caring for captive birds, she now cares for wild birds by acquiring and managing land that provides them with habitat. She can also be found in the woods talking to the wildlife in both their native tongue and English, but they usually don’t respond to English unless she yells really loud. Melissa loves performing in short plays and was lucky enough to have performed in all 7 annual Stage It! 10-Minute Play Festivals from 2017-2023. It is a treat for her to be able to bring these five wonderful plays to life. Some of her favorite roles in full-length plays over the years include Mrs. Peacock in Clue! On Stage and Jeremy/Brother Venerius in The Divine Sister at the Center for the Performing Arts Bonita Springs and Clown 1 in The 39 Steps at the Marco Arts Center Theatre. Melissa would like to recognize all the wonderful friends she’s made over the years performing 10-minute plays at the Center for the Arts Bonita Springs. We had a blast! Thank you for the memories.
Frank Blocker (Man, Carl, Dorcas, Shopkeeper, Charlyn) is making his third appearance at Fringe where his solo works won Best of Venue in the first two Fringe iterations. An actor and playwright, he made his Off-Broadway debut in both disciplines with the comedy Eula Mae’s Beauty, Bait & Tackle (which will run the week following 5×10 in the same venue…Theatre Conspiracy producing). His other Off-Broadway plays include Suite Atlanta, Southern Gothic Novel (New York Drama Desk Award nomination), Stabilized Not Controlled, and just last summer, Good Jew premiered at the Museum of Jewish History and just played the Norris Center Auditorium in Naples. He frequently appears locally at Naples’ TheatreZone, most recently appearing in Jersey Boys. Frank has compiled and edited ten volumes of short plays honoring other playwrights and is happy to bring back some of the best scripts from the Stage It! 10-Minute Play Festivals because audiences love ‘em. He is a member of Actors’ Equity Association, SAG/AFTRA and The Dramatists Guild. A California-born, Arizona and Oklahoma-raised, Atlanta actor, who did the “New York thing” for more than a decade, his New York credits include Roderick Usher in Steven Berkoff’s Fall of the House of Usher, Mr. Peachum in The Beggar’s Opera, Brecht’s Edward II, The Don Quixote Project, and Obie-winning West Village/East Village Fragments. Regional credits include The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Divine Sister, Me and My Girl and Amadeus. He is Assistant Pastor at Jubilee Fellowship of Naples, Florida, where he now lives with his partner, artist/thinker Ted de Clercq, and retired greyhound racer, Razmus in their own tropical paradise of a yard. And of course, excited to be working with Melissa. Let’s see what two hams can do with all this delicious cheese.
PLAYWRIGHT BIOS
Dan Borengasser – The Third Person
Many of Dan’s plays have been produced or have received staged readings. A number of plays – including A.R@Uni.Gov, The Kindness of Strangers, Goat Song Revel, The Canterbury Tales Revisited, and Sense & Insensibility – have been published. My plays have been produced in theaters across the country, from New York to Los Angeles, as well as in Canada, Mexico, India, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Several short screenplays have been produced as well as a co-written feature length film The Donor Conspiracy. A number of radio plays have also been produced and broadcast nationally. http://www.danborengasser.com
Jim Geoghan – The Next Ivan Sheransky
NAACP Image Award winner and two-time Emmy nominee for Family Matters and The Suite Life of Zach and Cody. Also a Drama Desk Award nominee for his long-running Off-Broadway hit Only Kidding. We’ve found Mr. Geoghan to be a comedy machine as his work includes abstract characters to realistic, for teens and for adults–no matter the situation, the man knows his comedy. This piece is based on a real conversation he overhead of a fellow actor losing an audition for the role of a corpse.
Oded Gross – Stain
Recently, his new full-length play Annelie received a reading at The Laboratory Theatre in Fort Myers as one of three winners in their international playwriting competition. His plays have been produced throughout the United States and abroad, most notably at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Idaho Shakespeare Festival, The Great Lakes Theater, The Theatre at Boston Court and The Moscow Art Theatre in Moscow, Russia. His adaptations include Moliere’s The Imaginary Invalid, Goldoni’s The Servant of Two Masters and Gogol’s The Government Inspector (aka The Inspector General), for which he also wrote the music. His original play Dantino’s, an original Commedia Dell’Arte that tackles the controversial issue of gay marriage was developed at Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Black Swan Lab and was a finalist for the 2017 Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. His play Heart Attack With A Knife, a murder mystery farce, was produced at Northern Kentucky University’s prestigious Y.E.S. Festival, and developed at The Workshop Theatre. Tragedy, a comedy dealing with the inevitability of tragedy was selected for the New Plays New Jersey Reading Series at the Bickford Theatre. Butterflies and Margarine was a semi-finalist for the George R. Kernodle Playwriting Competition and selected to be part of the 2017 Renegade Theatre N.O.W. Festival. His most recent play, A Solution of Sorts was included in the Athena Theatre Company’s new play development series Athena Reads. His adaptations, as well as his original productions have garnered numerous Critics Picks and nominations including Best Adaptation by LA Weekly, Backstage West and LA Stage Times for The Government Inspector and LA Weekly’s Critics “Pick Of The Week” for his one act The Comedy of Romeo and Juliet. He received his degree in drama from Brandeis University. He is a proud member of the Dramatist Guild and an even prouder husband and father of two beautiful children.
Craig Gustafson – Pre-Code
Craig’s first full-length play, the farce The Angle of Mercy, premiered at GreenMan Theatre Troupe, Elmhurst, Illinois, and won the 2022 BroadwayWorld–Chicago Award for Best New Play or Musical. A member of the Dramatists Guild of America, Craig has had ten-minute plays published in anthologies: Lending a Hand–Best Ten Minute Plays of 2019– Smith & Kraus; A Cheap Maid in Chasteside–The Best Ten-Minute Plays of 2020–Smith & Kraus; Save Me, Myron Glick!–The Best New Ten Minute Plays of 2021–Applause Theatre & Cinema Books. His script It’s Very Becoming, for the 2022 Chicago 48 Hour Film Project won the Best Writing Award. Craig is matrimonially ensconced with the daringly freckled & scandalously redheaded Margie, poet/author of Haiku Very Much.
Steven San Luis – Mime Stop
Steven is a Brooklyn-based Queer playwright, director, and theater professional originally from southern Georgia. They earned a Masters in Dramatic Writing from New York University Tisch School of the Arts. San Luis’ work has been featured in the Stage It! book and produced at various festivals through Local Theater Company, The Road Theater Company, Boxfest Detroit, the Gene Frankel Theater, Pocket Theater VR, and Ghostlight Ensemble. In their work as a director, the production Disordered won the Best Encore Award at the United Solo Festival (NY). Their play The Rope Trick will premiere at Anaconda Ensemble Theatre in November, 2025. stevensanluis.com
Frank Blocker 