The 19th Annual United Solo Theatre Festival – Fall 2025

Featuring shows from across the country and around the globe, the world’s largest solo theatre festival is entering our eighteenth season!

Schedule of Events:

2:00 pm: Undesirable Secrets

Starring Rodolfo Alvarado

What would you do if a powerful entity like the U.S. Army ordered you to stay silent—or face prison? Anthony Acevedo obeyed such an order for 63 years.
In this raw and riveting solo work, written and performed by Rodolfo Alvarado, the true story of Anthony Acevedo comes to life—a WWII combat medic and Holocaust survivor, one of 350 American GIs secretly sent to Berga, a Nazi slave labor camp. Following Hitler’s directive to replace dying Jewish slave laborers with Jewish American GIs, the Nazis selected some for their religion and others at random. What Anthony endured in Berga was horrific—but nothing compared to the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father as a child.

Directed by William M. Doll, Undesirable Secrets is more than a history play—it’s a shared reckoning. Performed with haunting intimacy, the show has left audiences across the country stunned into silence, then rising in standing ovation. As Anthony speaks directly to the audience, his story becomes a mirror: What secrets are you still carrying? What truth might finally set you free?

Developed with generous input and guidance from the Anthony Acevedo Educational Foundation.

By Rodolfo Alvarado

Running Time: 85 minutes

7:00 pm: Casualty of War

Starring Sharon Lesser

WINNER: BEST ONE-WOMAN SHOW, UNITED SOLO’S SPRING 2025 FESTIVAL! Sharon’s got a perfect itinerary planned: A mother-son tour of Normandy and Omaha Beach, with some road tripping, great French food and a visit to Paris. What she gets is a journey with a sullen, heart-broken adolescent whose own emotional D-Day turns him into a hostile adversary pining for home. There’s a war brewing and it’s not between the Germans and the Allies. While trying to make the best of things by attempting to outmaneuver her son’s everchanging moods (i.e., being a mom), she’s surprised by how the WW2 history they encounter invokes memories of antisemitism and the impact the Holocaust had on her family. Casualty of War explores the timeless themes of motherhood, intergenerational trauma and identity.

You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll crave rosé.

Writer and Performer: Sharon Lesser
Director and Dramaturg: Austin Meads Tooley:
Dramaturg: Anisa Rose Threlkeld

Running Time: 68 minutes