Tony Howarth, who has directed plays and taught playwriting seminars at Howard Meyer’s Axial Theatre in Pleasantville, is working closer to his Patterson home these days.

Tonight, he opens a weekend run of “Shorts on the Lake” — six one-act plays he directed — at Kent’s Arts on the Lake. With performances tonight and tomorrow at 8 and Sunday at 3, “Shorts on the Lake” includes 11 actors, six one-acts and one director: Howarth.

“It’s with a community spirit in mind that I got involved,” says Howarth, adding that the conversion of the firehouse to an arts center has intrigued him.

Arts on the Lake has been presenting readings, music and children’s shows, but not a “fully produced theatrical program,” Howarth says. James Shearwood, one of the brains behind Arts on the Lake, chatted with Howarth about directing at the center.

“James gave me three or four pieces which came from Kent and I had a packet of plays I’ve always wanted to do, plays I’ve seen or done,” he says. “A couple of them are my students’ plays, so that’s a joy.”

“The Mannequins,” by Shearwood, was developed two years ago at Garrison’s Depot Theatre where it was titled, “Virtuality.”

Howarth says the 16-minute play — the longest of the evening’s offerings — is about “a man who is shy in the presence of women, so he steals mannequins.”

“I would classify it as a farce,” Howarth says. “I don’t know if that’s the way James feels about it. I think he probably feels it’s a comedy. It’s a funny piece and I was happy to have it in the program.”

Howarth is no longer formally connected with the 10-year-old Axial Theater, but he still runs the playwright’s workshop there.

He had directed Linda Giuliano’s “Mondays at Eight” there.

“It’s an obvious crowd-pleaser,” he says, involving a man in the rain waiting at a bus stop who is approached by a young lady.

“It’s a very heartbreaking little piece,” he says. “I adore it. It’s a lovely, lovely play.”

Howarth says some plays are better as one-acts, recalling Shirley Lauro’s “Open Admissions.”

“It’s an incredibly wonderful one-act play,” he says. “I saw it long ago at Ensemble Studio Theatre. It was so lovely and everyone said, ‘It’s such a lovely play, we’ve got to make it a big play and put it on Broadway. They did and it lasted two days. They expanded it into oblivion.”

“I love the characters (in ‘Mondays at Eight”) but I hope she doesn’t expand it,” he says.

Gabrielle Fox’s “The Graveyard Shift,” was written quickly, Howarth says.

“Gaby is in my playwriting seminar with Axial,” he says. “She came in and said ‘I’ve got a new play. I wrote it last week.’”

“She wrote it very quickly and it’s very complete,” Howarth says. “Sometimes a play gets written and it gets developed into oblivion, but this one was electric right from the very beginning.”

The play deals with “two people in a graveyard who are there to grieve for somebody who has been buried there,” Howarth says.

Keely Madden’s “Cuddle Time” is about “a young married couple trying to work things out in front of a therapist.”

Madden, likewise, once took part in a Howarth playwriting seminar.

Midhat Serbagi’s adaptation of “The Soul of the Violin” by Margaret M. Merrill “is probably one of the most intriguing things in the whole program,” he says.

“It’s such a wonderful challenge to take a piece of fiction and put it up on the stage,” he says. “It requires rethinking the work of fiction but at the same time making it dramatically interesting. The demands of fiction and the demands of theater are so different.”

“The whole program is a work of love,” he says. “I have had such a wonderful time doing this stuff.”

The final piece is “Sally in the  Middle” — by Tony Howarth.

“We had to make a correction somewhere along the line, to edit a line and I said ‘Let me talk to the playwright,’” he says with a laugh, adding, “He’s so hard to work with.”

“Sally in the Middle” came to Howarth as he overheard two elderly ladies talking too loudly in a Midtown diner.

“They kept saying ‘Where is Sally? Sally should be here. What happened to Sally?’ For 15 minutes, this was their conversation and it got me to thinking, ‘Gee, I wonder where Sally actually is.’

“And I came out of it with a play,” he says, laughing.

There should be no doubt where Howarth will be this weekend: Close to home. Watching plays he loves.

Shorts on the Lake
Where: Lake Carmel Cultural Center, 640 Route 52, Kent Lakes.
When: 8 p.m., today and tomorrow; 3 p.m. Sunday.
Tickets: $12, $10 for members.
Call: 845-228-2685.
Web: rsvp@artsonthelake.org.
What: “The Mannequins” by James Shearwood; “The Graveyard Shift” by Gabrielle Fox; “Mondays at Eight” by Linda Giuliano; “Cuddle Time” by Keely Madden; “The Soul of the Violin” by Margaret M. Merrill adapted by Midhat Serbagi; “Sally in the Middle” by Tony Howarth
With: Angela Bowman, Fred Rueck, Lora Lee Ecobelli, Laurel Lettieri, Jon Barb, Midhat Serbagi, Bruce Iacono, Margi Condyles, Fidel Fonteboa, Zulie Lozada and Sean Hopkins.
Havel on horizon
Arts on the Lake, in conjunction with the upstate Liberty Free Theatre, presents Vaclav Havel’s “Audience” on June 4-7.