The Village Theatre Group Presents
WINTER ONE-ACT FESTIVAL
Feb 11-22, 2026
Sargent Theatre
The Village Theater Group is launching their inaugural Winter One-Act Festival – a powerful 110 minute evening of live theatre featuring one original one-act play and two classic one-acts reimagined by today’s rising voices.
Last February we launched our first Off-Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s The Price and are set to follow up this year with another production with the aims of launching for the Summer and Winter season in upcoming years.
This One-Acts Winter Festival is not just a show—it’s a platform for passionate young artists, new playwrights, emerging directors, dedicated interns, and the professional talent of our new company to take the stage and make their mark.
Previews begin February 11th. Evening performances are Tuesday through Sunday at 7:00pm. Matinee performances are Saturday and Sunday at 2pm. Post-performance discussions follow Wednesday and Thursday matinees.
The 110 minute program will begin with Interview by Jean Claude Van Itallie, followed by Last Meals by Edward Gibbons-Brown, and The Groves of Academe by Mark Stein.
INTERVIEW
The topic under examination is an employment interview treated in a satirical, imaginatively stylized, darkly humorous way. Four interviewers interview a scrubwoman, a house painter, a banker and a lady’s maid, While commonplace enough, suddenly the most innocent statements are foreboding, revealing absurd bureaucracy and dehumanization. The interviewers are trying to destroy the dignity of the four clients, and the latter fight to hold their self-respect. We, the audience, are thrust into awareness.
Writer: Jean-Claude Van Itallie
Director: Richie Byrne
Assistant Director: Ana B Gabriel
Cast:
Sara Abebe (First Interviewer)
Andrew Beregovoy (Second Interviewer)
Sandy Singh (Third Interviewer)
Fernando Figueroa Valladares (Fourth Interviewer)
Rafael Antonio Pacheco (First Applicant)
Leeann Ortiz (Second Applicant)
Kerry Wolf (Third Applicant)
Robin Brenner (Fourth Applicant)
LAST MEALS
A grief-stricken elite diner seeks solace in a bespoke “last meal,” only to discover the server needs something far more urgent than remembrance: intervention.
In a private dining alcove of a world-class restaurant, The Diner arrives for a bespoke “last meal,” a carefully curated ritual meant to honor a lost friend and soothe lingering guilt. As the night unfolds, it becomes clear that The Server has orchestrated the meal as a confrontation, not a service. What begins as an exercise in nostalgia and control becomes an urgent moral reckoning, culminating in a single, costly decision that transforms grief into action.
Writer & Director: Edward Gibbons-Brown
Assistant Director: Jasmine Jade Binder
Cast:
Gaston Leguizamon – The Server
Patricia M. Lawrence – The Diner
THE GROVES OF ACADEME
In the cramped office of Professor Bill Groves, is visited by Paul Morris, a rather quirky undergrad who asks to be admitted to an honors seminar on comedy. In a series of quick-changing scenes which span the school year, the two discuss Paul’s academic record, the subject of his term paper and, as they become more at ease with each other, their private lives and feelings. Paul’s opinions and behavior are gradually influenced as much by Groves’ individual qualities as by his intellectual attainments. Highly amusing and sharply observant, the play conveys much about the academic “treadmill,” but even more about the special strengths that can be nurtured when student and teacher reach beyond the formal relationship that, so often, is all that exists between them
Writer: Mark Stein
Director: Sean Hoagland
Cast:
Daniel J Condon (Paul Morris)
Jaren Anderson (Professor Bill Groves)