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Jenna Sargent fell in love with “All in the Timing,” a collection of one-act plays by David Ives, when she was in high school.

“I was looking for something to read, and randomly grabbed it off my parents’ bookshelf,” she said. “I thought it was hilarious, so it is so exciting to revisit it as a director.”

A first-time director, Sargent is leading the cast in the upcoming production “All in the Timing” at Lafayette Society for Performing Arts this Thursday through Saturday.

The work is a series of separate 15-20 minute comedies.

“David Ives wrote many short plays over the years, but this particular set focuses on the question of timing and, more specifically, the timing of the choices we make at any given moment,” she said. “Ives uses the characters in each piece to explore this idea and simultaneously poke fun at the futility of man.”

Sargent calls the show her “love letter” to theater.

“It is the culmination of my lifelong love of theater that I share with my mom (Cathy Hunt), my sister (Diana Sargent Goolsby) and my fiancé (Garrett Dye), all of whom are involved with the show,” she said.

Working with the cast has been a wild ride.

“They are all so talented and funny, you will laugh so hard you cry,” she said. “I have been rehearsing this show for six weeks and have read it dozens of times. This cast is still finding new ways to make me laugh all the time.”

The play asks if a person’s fate is predetermined and unchangeable regardless of the decisions we make; or does each individual choice lead us down a different path to an infinite number of destinies?

Working with the show has led Sargent to ask those questions herself.

“A very specific, and seemingly unrelated, series of choices led me here,” she said. “I met my lifelong best friend (and now fiancé) doing theater when I was in the seventh grade,” she said.

“We were both in Troup High School’s production of ‘Cinderella.’ I was only in the production because my dad was the director. Garrett was there because my father cast him in his first role.”

The cherry on the top was when Sargent ran into Brittany Taylor, her most theater influential mentor.

“I was working at the new Starbucks when Brittany and her family came in,” Sargent said. “She and her family were traveling around in an RV and they happened to stop in LaGrange for a few months before leaving on their cross-country adventure.”

While the friends began catching up, Sargent mentioned she was directing her first show.

“Almost as a joke, I asked Brittany if she wanted to be in my show,” Sargent said. “To my delight, she said yes. Who could have written such a coincidence? Was it a fluke, or… was it all in the timing?”

Shows  are at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday and at 3 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $15 for students and $20 for adults, and can be purchased at https://www.lsparts.org/tickets/index.html. For more information, call LSPA at 706-882-9909.