Ok, here it is, using a "Use smarty template" option ...,
but is has no utf8 mb_substr support, as we are with smarty 2.6.x, and the js node string option is still done in the plugin, which hasn't have truncation support at all. But you can use it within the tpl file also and in there is some CSS magic to have something (nearly) similar. Just copy the files right into the serendipity_event_staticpage folder.
Maybe Garvin, you could just have a look if this is ready to update ...