ACTS OF LOVE
An Collection of Six One-Acts Plays and One Solo Play by
George Cameron Grant
Love! Lust! Longing! Laughs!
A Collection of One-Act Plays and One Solo Play by George Cameron Grant.
Love is never simple. Sometimes it's tender. Sometimes it's terrifying. Sometimes it's downright ridiculous. And sometimes, when we least expect it, love reminds us what it means to be human.
ACTS OF LOVE brings together seven distinctive theatrical works that explore the many faces of love—from romantic longing and second chances to family devotion, emotional redemption, and the outrageous complications of human relationships. Funny, provocative, poignant, and occasionally shocking, these are stories about people searching for connection, confronting their pasts, and discovering that love rarely follows the rules.
Featuring award-winning and festival-recognized works, the collection offers theatre companies, festivals, and producers the flexibility to license individual pieces or create an entire evening of theatre. With intimate casts, manageable running times, and economical production requirements, ACTS OF LOVE is particularly well suited to one-act festivals, black-box theatres, and intimate performance spaces.
SEVEN WORKS. COUNTLESS WAYS TO LOVE.
MINTS
One woman's tribute to a timeless love.
Marti English is an aspiring actress in her sixties, arriving breathless and late for an audition. Armed with an outdated headshot, a lifetime of memories, and a wonderfully irrepressible personality, she launches into a whirlwind account of the people, choices, and unexpected moments that shaped her life.
What begins as a delightfully funny audition quickly becomes something far more profound.
Through stories of her eccentric parents, youthful theatrical ambitions, and an unlikely romance with a devoted man named Sy, Marti reveals a life filled with laughter, sacrifice, heartbreak, and an extraordinary love that continues to inspire her.
As her story unfolds, we discover why this particular audition means so much—and why a simple tin of mints can hold a lifetime of memories.
MINTS is a funny, touching, and ultimately uplifting celebration of enduring love, second chances, and the courage to pursue a dream at any age.
AWARDS & RECOGNITION
-
WINNER – BEST PLAY — Manhattan Repertory Theatre Summer Challenge
-
WINNER – BEST PLAY — The Secret Theatre Winter One Act Festival
-
OFFICIAL PARTICIPANT — United Solo Theatre Festival, NYC
CRITICAL PRAISE
“An enjoyable, fast-paced one-woman show that elicits
both laughs and tears!”
— Theresa Perkins, My Theatre
PRODUCTION INFORMATION
Genre: Dramatic Comedy
Format: One-Woman Play / Solo Performance
Cast: 1 Woman (60s)
Running Time: Approximately 16 Minutes
Setting: A Rehearsal Studio
ADAM & EVIE
They finally found Paradise.
Now if they can only keep their hands off each other.
Adam Furstman is a sweet, sensitive nice guy. Evie Finger is a passionate, uninhibited Bronx wild child. They've known each other for just eight days, and already they're hopelessly in love.
There's just one problem.
After a particularly enthusiastic romantic marathon leaves Evie suffering from honeymoon cystitis, her doctor orders a temporary ban on sex. For Adam, it's a matter of protecting the woman he loves. For Evie, it's thirty days of unimaginable torture.
As temptation mounts, their bedroom becomes a battlefield of outrageous seduction, hilarious misunderstandings, and increasingly desperate attempts at self-control. And lurking just outside the bedroom is Caligula, an over-protective 100-pound Sheepadoodle with some very peculiar habits.
But beneath the laughter lies a touching question: Can two people who've spent their lives afraid of abandonment finally trust that love is here to stay?
ADAM & EVIE is a wildly funny, delightfully irreverent romantic comedy about desire, restraint, vulnerability, and discovering that nothing's sexier than love.
Cast: 1 Male, 1 Female; 1 unseen Sheepadoodle (sound effects)
Running Time: Approximately 30 minutes
Setting: A Bronx apartment, at daybreak.
STIFF
THINK FAST FESTIVAL PARTICIPANT
Love makes people do extraordinary things. Sometimes, extraordinarily disturbing things.
Lulu and Casper are in love. But there's a problem. A rather substantial problem. Lying beneath a blanket on their couch is a stiff—a dead man whose presence threatens to destroy their future together.
And this is no ordinary corpse. He's Casper's father, a man whose influence over his son has survived even his own death.
As Lulu and Casper confront the emotional wreckage of the past, their increasingly outrageous predicament becomes a darkly comic examination of love, loyalty, childhood trauma, and the extraordinary lengths people will go to for someone they love.
Provocative, irreverent, and unexpectedly touching, STIFF asks a question that is as uncomfortable as it is universal:
What would YOU put on the line for the person you love?
Production Information
Genre: Dark Comedy / One-Act Play
Cast: 1 Woman, 1 Man, 1 Stiff
Approximate Running Time: 15 minutes
Setting: A living room with a couch.
Production Requirements: Intimate cast and minimal set.
Content Advisory: Mature themes, strong language, and irreverent humor.
What would YOU put on the line for the person you love?
PHILENA, THE LOVER
OF MANKIND
MANHATTAN REPERTORY THEATRE
SUMMER FESTIVAL PARTICIPANT
Who says 70 isn't sexy?
At seventy, Philena is a flamboyant, foul-mouthed widow who still turns heads in skin-tight leather pants. Her nearly fifty-year-old, recently divorced daughter Caitlin is her exact opposite—conservative, repressed, and perpetually mortified by her mother's outrageous behavior. Forced to share a one-bedroom apartment, the two women are preparing for first dates on the same evening. What could possibly go wrong?
As sexual innuendo, romantic frustrations, and generational warfare erupt into hilarious chaos, the evening takes an unexpected turn, revealing the loneliness, vulnerability, and enduring love beneath Philena's outrageous exterior.
PHILENA, THE LOVER OF MANKIND is a wildly irreverent, surprisingly tender comedy about aging, sexuality, self-acceptance, and the extraordinary bond between a mother and daughter.
Cast: 2 Women; 1 Man
Running Time: Approximately 20–22 minutes
Setting: A one-bedroom apartment living room
Production: Simple set and lighting
Content Advisory: Strong language and explicit sexual humor. Intended for adult audiences.
LOCO MOTIVES
SAMUEL FRENCH OFF OFF BROADWAY
FESTIVAL FINALIST
Where can you hide
when your life's gone off track?
America's most beloved writer has disappeared.
Matthew Virga, a celebrated literary sensation, has faked his own death and retreated to a nearly empty Bronx apartment, seeking refuge from a life he can no longer bear.
But his carefully constructed disappearance comes undone when Charles Hoffman arrives at his door carrying a secret from their shared childhood.
Forty years earlier, Matthew was the bully. Charles was his victim.
Now Charles is dying, and he's come with one final proposition: write the story of his life, or risk having the truth about Matthew's disappearance exposed to the world.
What begins as a bitter confrontation becomes an unexpected journey through childhood memories, old wounds, and the possibility of redemption.
Against the unlikely backdrop of a vintage Lionel train set, two men discover that sometimes the only way forward is to revisit the past.
LOCO MOTIVES is a darkly funny, deeply moving one-act drama about the lasting scars of bullying, the burden of regret, and the extraordinary healing power of human connection.
Cast: 2 Male
Running Time: Approximately 30 minutes
Setting: A Bronx apartment
Production Requirements: Simple set
SURRENDER
SAMUEL FRENCH OFF OFF BROADWAY
FESTIVAL FINALIST
In the end, it's always about love.
In a world ravaged by environmental catastrophe, where the very air has become deadly and military authority governs what remains of civilization, two elderly lovers return to a deserted Bronx park for one last picnic.
Morty and Mary haven't shared a picnic in more than fifty years.
Now, armed with gas masks, cream soda, baloney sandwiches, and a lifetime of unfinished business, they have come back to the place where their young love was shattered by an act of unspeakable violence.
As they reminisce about their childhood, lost dreams, and the afternoon that changed their lives forever, laughter gives way to painful revelations, long-buried guilt, and the possibility of forgiveness.
But their reunion is interrupted by a young soldier ordered to enforce the brutal laws of a dying society.
Faced with the ultimate choice between obedience and compassion, the soldier must confront something his training never prepared him for: two people who have decided that love is worth dying for.
SURRENDER is a poignant, darkly humorous, and deeply moving exploration of love, loss, forgiveness, and the extraordinary courage required to reclaim a stolen past.
In a world surrendering to destruction, two people refuse to surrender to anything but love.
AWARDS & RECOGNITION
FINALIST — Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival
PRODUCTION INFORMATION
Genre: Dystopian Drama / Romantic Drama
Format: One-Act Play
Cast: 2 Men, 1 Woman
Running Time: Approximately 23 Minutes
Setting: A deserted Bronx park in the not-so-distant future.
Production Requirements: A contained setting with minimal props, atmospheric sound, and lighting effects.
Content Advisory: Contains discussion of sexual assault and traumatic violence.
DANCERS IN THE DARK
Sometimes true love needs one last dance.
SAMUEL FRENCH OFF OFF BROADWAY
FESTIVAL FINALIST
After forty-eight years of marriage, Jack De Nardo has lost Sophie, the only woman he ever loved. When he walks into his neighborhood Bronx luncheonette one cold morning, his friend Julius and waitress Gracie are determined to help him start living again. But when Gracie begins revealing intimate details of Jack's marriage that she couldn't possibly know, an ordinary morning becomes extraordinary.
A mysterious song on an old jukebox, a pair of silver dancing shoes, and one final dance suggest that Sophie may have one last gift for the husband she left behind.
DANCERS IN THE DARK is a funny, tender, and gently magical story about enduring love, second chances, and finding the courage to begin again.
Cast: 2 Male; 1 Female
Running Time: Approximately 20 minutes
Setting: A Bronx luncheonette