GROTON – Saturday evening’s performance of the Village Theatre Project’s inaugural play, the comic farce Better Off Dead, played to a full house and a standing ovation at the Groton-Dunstable Performing Arts Center. The new theatre company is the Nashoba Valley’s only professional theatre, and is based around an ensemble of highly accomplished artists living mainly in Boston and New York, and making a home for performances in Groton and Harvard.

Better Off Dead, a zany new farce written by Company member and playwright Shawn Sturnick, was developed in part by the theatre company last summer during its two week Ashby Retreat, a collaborative playwriting residency in Ashby. The current production at the Groton-Dunstable Performing Arts Center is the play’s world premiere. “Several other theatres have expressed interest in the play,” noted Co-Artistic Director Troy Siebels, “in Washington D.C. and New York. We’d like to keep it here in Groton a little longer, and then perhaps investigate a Boston production.”

Better Off Dead is an audience pleaser – characters include a would-be playwright (played by Shelley Bolman) who is mistakenly reported dead in a freak accident. This incites a ticket-buying frenzy - everyone wants to see ‘the play the dead guy wrote.’ Now, the playwright is famous and his awful play is a great box-office success... as long as he stays dead. An underhanded Broadway producer and agent are played by Boston theatre veterans Dale Place and Cheryl McMahon. Co-Artistic Director and Ashby resident Chris Chew plays a variety of roles, ranging from a truck driver, to a New Jersey hit man, to the Mayor of New York. “When I first read the script, I knew immediately it would be a big hit for us,” remembers Chew. “We need to show people that they can see professional theatre without driving all the way into Boston and paying twice the ticket price, plus parking and hassle.”

The production is performed in the group’s 150-seat ‘black box’ theatre, constructed on the stage of the Groton-Dunstable Performing Arts Center. “The auditorium is much bigger than we need or want,” explains Siebels, “so we’ve created our own venue within it.”