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'Little Mary' speaks for playwright

Bill Leavengood of St. Petersburg wants to draw attention to topics such as overpopulation and the environment.

By LORRIE LYKINS
Published June 21, 2005

NEW YORK - It was a milestone birthday that got St. Petersburg playwright Bill Leavengood started on writing Little Mary, currently in production off-Broadway at the Sanford Meisner Theater.

"I was turning 40 and asking myself what I really wanted to spend my time writing about. I realize the time I have is limited and so I want to tackle issues that I have passion for and that I believe should be addressed," said Leavengood, now 45. He's in New York overseeing the production, which opened June 2 and runs through June 26.

Given its subject matter - a virgin birth - Little Mary seems a statement about the politics of faith and the Roman Catholic church. But Leavengood says the story grew out of his concern about the precarious state of the planet, given population growth and the destruction of the environment.

"The findings of research that's being done on overpopulation are scary as hell and it bothers me that I read about it in the news only occasionally," he said. "I decided I had to figure out a theatrical way to package addressing the issue so that it would be engaging and speak to everyone, religious, atheist or agnostic."

Set in a remote Catholic mission in California, Little Mary begins with the revelation from 15-year-old Christina - or Little Mary as she becomes known - that she is pregnant with seven babies but is still a virgin.

St. Petersburg native Monica Raymund, a freshman at the Juilliard School, plays the role of Christina. (While a student at Shorecrest Preparatory School, where Leavengood teaches, Raymond starred locally in another Leavengood play, Manhattan Casino.)

At the time Christina announces her pregnancy, the Mexican-American girl is emerging as a leader among the youth of the mission church. Raymund plays the role with ethereal detachment, hovering above the action churning around her but never quite coming in full contact with the chaos.

Christina is a favorite of Archbishop Tivoli, played by Broadway veteran actor Ron Orbach. Tivoli's faith is challenged when Christinaclaims that God is the father of her seven unborn babies - representing the seven races of mankind. Orbach attacks the role of the strong-willed Tivoli with forceful momentum that drives the action from start to finish. Some of the high points of the show are Tivoli's debates about the situation and the position of the church with his world-weary mentor, Cardinal Gian, played by another Broadway veteran, Jeremy Lawrence.

As word spreads of the modern-day immaculate conception, Christina becomes an international celebrity and hordes of the faithful, the media and corporate interests descend on Tivoli's desert mission. Added to the mix are Christina's father who seems more concerned with commercial endorsements and corporate sponsorship than the welfare of his daughter, a sleazy cardinal who descends from the Vatican, and Tivoli's friend, Lulit, a recently converted nun who is a former shaman from Africa.

Little Mary began its trek to its New York debut five years ago with a first staged reading at American Stage in St. Petersburg.

"It's been an evolution from the first draft in 2000 to what is on the stage today," Leavengood said. Some development work was done on the play with the Circle East Theatre Company writing lab in New York, then more workshop development follwed in Los Angeles, a process Leavengood called excruciating.

"It started to wander so far off from what I was trying to accomplish that I was really ready to scrap the whole thing," he said. "Then we had a reading in Jessica's (Kubzansky, who would direct the play) living room and Ron Orbach read the part of Tivoli as a sort of Abbie Hoffman-type and that was it."

A patron came forward and offered to underwrite the cost of producing the play in New York, and Leavengood and his wife, Diana, scrambled to put together a production team that includes Shorecrest alumni Emilee Dupre asassistant stage manager and Aaron Ableman, assistant director. Rehearsals began six weeks before the play opened.

The collaboration continued in the early weeks of rehearsal, as Leavengood allowed the actors leeway to offer input into the script and their characters.

"It was a very tough rehearsal period, because the first two-and-a-half weeks we were throwing script changes at the actors daily."

This is not Leavengood's first off-Broadway outing. The two-time Eugene O'Neill award-winner has had several other plays mounted in New York beginning with The Head at the Chelsea Playhouse, The Preservation Society at Primary Stages and Florida Crackers which was presented as part of the Circle Repertory's 20th anniversary season. His one-act play, Steve, was part of "Brave New World: The American Theater Responds to 9/11," presented on Sept. 11, 2002 at New York's Town Hall.

Leavengood is best known locally for his creation of Webb's City: The Musical (music composed by Lee Ahlin) and Crossing the Bay. Along with Manhattan Casino, all of the projects were produced by the LiveArts Peninsula Foundation, which Leavengood co-founded. LiveArts recently announced that it is disbanding, which Leavengood said was a tough decision.

"I keep thinking about Lee's song Wasn't it a Good Ride? (from Webb's City) and you know, it was. The job just kept getting bigger and more intense, the arena of support got smaller and then the financial problems came and eventually overwhelmed us."

Theatrically, Leavengood said that Little Mary has been his most challenging project.

"But it's been the most important to me. I've aimed higher with his project than with anything else I've attempted before. I'm nervous and happy about it all at the same time because this play really walks a tightrope - the challenge here has been to elevate the drama without sliding into melodrama while saying: "Look at us, at humanity, look at how awful we can be.'

Leavengood will resume teaching at Shorecrest in the fall where he has been a faculty member for 10 years. Part of the challenge of Little Mary has been being away from home for so long, he said.

"It's been a lot to ask of Diana and our girls," he said of his wife and daughters Alice, 9 and Charlotte, 6.

"What's next on the agenda is a break. This has been a very intense period of time. We went from Crossing the Bay to the student production of My Fair Lady at Shorecrest right into Little Mary. It's been nonstop."

[Last modified June 20, 2005, 19:43:03]