About Bill Leavengood

 

Contact:

21stCenturyPlayhouse@gmail.com

 

William Leavengood is a two-time O’Neill playwright and alumnus of Circle Repertory. He is the author of over 50 plays, screenplays and books for musicals. His Off-Broadway credits include Special on Theatre Row; Little Mary

at the Sanford Meisner Theatre; The Head at the Chelsea Playhouse; The Preservation Society at Primary Stages; and Florida Crackers, which premiered as part of Circle Repertory’s 20th Anniversary Season. Leavengood’s short

play, Steve, was presented at the Town Hall Theatre in New York as part of Brave New World: The American Theater responds to 9/11, and subsequently made into a short film starring Fisher Stevens. 

 

Los Angeles productions include The Head at the Matrix (which he developed as a screenplay for 20th Century Fox); What Is Art? at the Court; and The Break at New American Theatre. 

 

Regional productions include The Azure Sky in Oz at the Straz Performing Arts Center; What Is Art? at GeVa Theatre; Money Maker at the Heather Theater; Webb’s City: The Musical at the Mahaffey Theater and Ruth Eckerd Hall; Crossing The Bay at the Falk Theater, Tampa; American Road at the Gorilla Theatre; Food & Shelter at American Stage; Lourdes Of The Flies, at the Palladium Theatre, and The Azure Sky In Oz at the Straz Center, Tampa. A concert version of Webb’s City: The Musical and Crossing the Bay, were produced and then revived at the 800-seat Palladium Theater, St. Petersburg, Florida in 2018 and 2019.

 

His musical political satire, Drilled! The Musical, was produced at the Palladium's Side-Door Cabaret and will return in a new incarnation to The Studio@620 in 2026. Crossing the Bay, A New Musical about Old Florida, was produced at The Palladium’s Hough Hall; and his one-acts, Infinit-E, Lady Obscura, and Password: Magnolia, were produced in New York by New Circle Theater Company's during there 2019 and 2020 season.

 

The most recent productions of his work in St. Petersburg include Gaspar: The Musical at The Palladium and The Sister-Mothers of Gulfport and The Azure Sky in Oz at the Off-Central. The Azure Sky in Oz had a successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the United Solo Theatre Festival in NYC and was revived at Southern Appalachian Repertory Theatre last summer.

 

 

Awards include major playwriting grants from the Berilla Kerr Foundation; the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, a 2025 Creative Pinellas Artist’s Impact Grant, and a 2025 Individual Artists Grant from the City of St. Petersburg. Also; the Brodkin Scholarship and Edith Oliver Fellowship Award at the National Playwright’s Conference; the 2015 Innovative Instruction in Playwriting Award from the Southeastern Theatre Conference; and four Best of the Bay Playwright honors (including 2024) from Creative Loafing, Tampa Bay. 

 

 

CURRENT AND UPCOMING:

 

A reading/singing of the our new musical comedy, FLORIDA MAN, as part of the Beach Theater New Play Festival, Sept. 21, 2025. Music by Constantine Grade, Music and Lyrics by William Leavengood

 

Performance by the Florida state champion Sunshine City Chorus at the St. Petersburg Museum of History, Sept. 25, 2025

 

Remounting of the SART production of TAIL OF THE BELL, directed by William Leavengood, at The Studio@620, St. Petersburg, FL, Oct. 2-5

 

Revival of the updated political musical satire, DRILLED! THE FINAL TERM? at the Studio@620, St. Petersburg, FL, Jan. 15-25, 2026