City Theatre's version of hot fun in the summertime, aka the Summer Shorts Festival, is all about the quality of the art, as any enduring theater festival must be. But the story of the company's annual celebration of short-but-mighty plays, dramas and mini-musicals also involves numbers and nimbleness.

The numbers are always impressive: More than 1,200 scripts are considered, though this year just 23 will wind up onstage, including plays by Nobel laureate Harold Pinter and Christopher Durang; musical pieces by Cyndi Lauper, Michael John LaChiusa and Lisa Loeb; and works by South Florida-based playwrights Michael McKeever, Marco Ramirez, Andrew Rosendorf and Christopher Demos-Brown.

Seven actors will perform the eight shows of the festival's traditional Signature Shorts and the seven on the bawdy Undershorts bill; another six actors do the eight plays in Shorts 4 Kids. A dozen directors, four designers, three stage managers and eight interns are involved.

The 14th annual festival, which runs at Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts through June 21, with a week at Fort Lauderdale's Broward Center after that, costs around $350,000, about three-quarters of the company's yearly budget.

Just as important as those numbers is the part about being nimble. That make-it-work philosophy is a mind set that executive director Stephanie Norman and artistic director Stuart Meltzer must have, lest they go mad.

''A few times, we've had to make tough calls,'' says Norman, one of City Theatre's three founders. ``Some of the artists and plays have changed since we chose them four months ago.''

Just a week ago, for example, an Undershorts play that was already cast, rehearsed and designed was dropped so the program wouldn't run long. One actor left the Signature/Undershorts company, so those parts were divvied up among other company members.

In part because of the economy, last year's ambitious festival -- two different Signature Shorts programs, Undershorts and Shorts 4 Kids -- was scaled back this year to just one Signature program, the late-night bill and the children's plays.

''You don't want to cannibalize yourself,'' says Norman. ``This year our programs are more clearly delineated, and Undershorts is letting us continue to cultivate a new audience with material that's even more provocative and edgy.''

When problems crop up or egos flare, as they inevitably do, the nurturing and upbeat Meltzer says, ``You take a breath, and you listen.''

The actors, a group of South Florida's finest, dig his approach. Elena Maria Garcia thinks of Meltzer as ``a big empanada. Comfort food. He's always reassuring.''

Besides Garcia, members of the Signature/Undershorts company are Stephen G. Anthony, Laura Turnbull, Erin Joy Schmidt, David Hemphill, John Manzelli and the performer who has come to be known as ''Mr. Summer Shorts,'' Stephen Trovillion. In the Shorts 4 Kids company are Katherine Amadeo, Chris Dall'au, Troy Davidson, Nick Duckardt, Vanessa Elise and Betsy Graver.

Trovillion, who spends the academic year running the bachelor's degree acting program at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, loves his once-a-year acting gig in Summer Shorts as much as the festival's audiences love him. Even so, he couldn't quite believe it when he discovered he had been cast in a record 10 plays this time.

'I called Stuart [Meltzer] and said, `There must be a typo on my play list.' But it was true, as I discovered to my horror,'' Trovillion says with the wry grin that has worked so well in many a Paul Rudnick play in Summer Shorts past. 'But I memorized nine of the 10 in two weeks. So I thought, `OK. There's still lead in the pencil.' ''

Trovillion dryly refers to himself and Turnbull as the ''Liz and Dick of Summer Shorts.'' The Carbonell Award-winning actress allows that she adores Trovillion, finds him ''wildly talented'' and that he can (and does) drive her crazy at times. She adds that one of the great pleasures of Summer Shorts for her is ``admiring and watching and learning -- enjoying everybody's work.''

Another Carbonell-winning actor, Gordon McConnell, tries his hand at directing in this year's festival. He has worked with Manzelli, Trovillion and Hemphill to find the right tone for Jettison, a piece playwright Brendan Andolsek Bradley describes as a grim comedy: ''I didn't know how to kill two people in a rowboat and make it funny,'' McConnell says.

He's also staging Jeffrey James Ircink's Pass the Salt, Please for Undershorts.

''It features a bored husband and wife and is full of very blue, crude, sexual speech,'' he says. ``It's like an acting exercise -- like riding a bicycle and washing dishes at the same time.''

Anthony, a first-timer in the Summer Shorts company, says it doesn't bother him in the least to do the late-night, out-there plays of Undershorts: ``I'm always a fan of ribaldry and bawdy theater. I enjoy the wink and the nod.''

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