The Gypsy Stage Repertory Theater Company will be at Art Center Sarasota this Friday with a collection of short plays from partnered playwrights Jo Morello and Jack Gilhooley entitled Life Upon the Wicked Stage. An allusion to the classic song from the musical Show Boat (the original lyric ending with “ain’t ever what a girl supposes”), Life gives audiences a playful peek at the behind-the-scenes quirks and characters that make the theater life simultaneously maddening and alluring.

“It’s a funny, inside look,” said Morello, who formerly served as the managing director of a theater for three years. Alongside husband Gilhooley, professional playwright, they realized they had enough stories and experience between the two of them to have a little fun and work on a project together, a rarity. “We only wrote one play together,” said Morello before dropping her voice. “That we survived.”

Called The Split, two of the six plays presented in Life are scenes adapted from the work. Following the comic travails of a dysfunctional playwright couple, the plays Connubial Bliss and Co-Dependents end the first and second acts respectively. Other works include The Dog Lovers, the surprisingly reality-based story of a man trying to mount a production with his pet pooch in the lead, Hetero Chorus Boy, a tale of hijinks and mistaken sexual identity, and Obsolete and The (Play)w/right Stuff.

A traveling production, Life Upon the Wicked Stage makes only one stop in Sarasota, a stop Morello says she specifically fought for, at Art Center Sarasota on Friday at 8pm. Tickets cost $15.