Bill Leavengood - Playwright, Screenwriter
Bill Leavengood is the author of 19 full-length plays, 20 one acts, 5 books for musicals, 4 novels for young adults, and 11 feature length screenplays. You can also find most of the plays on the New Play Exchange.
Plays
A brief summary of plays, screenplays & books by Bill Leavengood below. You can also find most of the plays on the New Play Exchange where people can go and read synopses and whole scripts at will:
Drilled the Musical
“A broad, go-for-broke political satire, chock full of expert and very witty lyrics. Bill takes shots at all targets – to the right, to the left and in between – and the results are hilarious”.
Joe DiPietro,
Tony-Award winning writer and lyricist
Crossing The Bay
A romantic musical journey back to the early days of St. Petersburg. Book & Direction by Bill Leavengood. Music & Lyrics by Lee Ahlin. Musical Direction by Constantine Grame.
Lady Obscura
Lady Obscura by Bill Leavengood, directed by Chamila Priyanka, with Amber Paul and Grace Chim. Produced in NYC as part of The Inferno Project, Greed and Wrath. Presented By New Circle Theatre Company at the Chain Theatre 312 West 36th, 4th floor New York, NY 10018.
Webb’s City
A multi-media concert version featuring all of the great music expertly woven together with narration, scene highlights and iconic images from five decades of St. Petersburg & Webb’s City history.
The Azure Sky in Oz
The Azure Sky in Oz is the powerful, intimate story of two women who face profound challenges when their lives become forever intertwined with the power and mysteries of the other-abled.
Lourdes of the Flies
A rollicking farce about a diverse group of prep school girls who accidentally sink their cruise ship and must struggle to survive and create a new society on a desert isle.
Little Mary
LITTLE MARY deals with a conservative Roman Catholic Cardinal and his protégé, a progressive California Bishop, whose lives are thrown into turmoil when a 15-year-old Mexican-American girl in their care creates an international sensation by claiming that the seven babies she carries are the children of God.
What Is Art?
Art is a lovable Casanova with no other talent than the ability to lie and pass himself off as someone else to the beautiful women he falls for. But he bites off more than he can chew when he impersonates a controversial abstract artist in order to woo a French art devotee.
Money Maker
MONEYMAKER is about the moral, ethical, economic, and racial struggles of a vivacious young non-profit arts organization director, her artist fiancé, a young homeless woman she takes in, and the ultra-wealthy board member who “loves” her and is the major financial supporter. A drama about the perversion of capitalism in every strata of today’s American society.
Florida Crackers
Circle Rep describes Florida Crackers as a ”scorching drama” set in the late 1970s, in which ”sun and drugs shape a summer on the beach for three brothers.”
The Preservation Society
Tensions simmer just under the surface as an affluent Charleston family hold a summer reunion at their mountain lake house in North Carolina in hopes of healing old wounds and planning their daughter’s wedding to the girl-next-door.
Bedtime Stories
When he receives a letter in jittery handwriting from his dying mother, a successful writer of children’s books returns home with his young fiance, only to have the demons of his dark past and twisted relationship with his mother begin to undermine his promising future.
Charley and Emma
The epic story of one of the most influential men in history, his adventures, discoveries, and lifelong relationship to Emma Wedgewood, his loving and loyal wife who stood by her husband through it all and to the end, despite being a devout Christian.
The Head
The disembodied head of a brilliant scientist, kept alive by an automated system of his own invention, must use his wits and cunning to take vengeance after a botched kidnapping leaves his lover dead, and his he and his lover’s “beard” wife captives in his secret underground laboratory in the English countryside.
American Road
A jaded young actor doing children’s touring theatre in Maine, an outside artist in a Memphis ghetto, a 60- year-old following the tour of the Grateful Dead and a young woman stranded in a truck stop parking lot doing sexual favors to make enough money to escape her abusive husband.
Interested in one of our plays?
Contact us via email to request a copy.
Screenplays
ZOM B MOVIE
ZOM B MOVIE is a comedy-horror that is just plain funny and just plain wrong. An aspiring film director, Morty Sasscori, owes the Russian Mafia $2.5 million. Morty thinks his life is saved when he convinces a huge star with alcohol issues to do “Queen of the Zombies”, his low-budget gore-flick set in the bayous of Louisiana. But when the star dies in a freak accident before the first day of shooting, all seems lost until Morty gains the help of a local voodoo queen.
CARBOYS
CARBOYS is a big budget, feature-length action adventure drama set in the near future. Cyber-terrorism has become the greatest challenge to both law enforcement and national security. Luxury vehicles have become so sophisticated that they drive themselves. Trip Wells is a High-tech Vehicle Reclaimer or “Carboy”, a member of a rugged and elite group whose job is to hunt down and recover the multimillion dollar luxury vehicles for Bratton Technologies, the manufacturing conglomerate that created them. It’s a dangerous job. The
car’s computer brains have been infected, turning them into killing machines bent on self-preservation and mayhem.
When Megan Mirantz, a company woman, joins the team to evaluate its viability, Trip and Megan begin to uncover a grand scheme being perpetrated by Bratton Technologies to clandestinely hold the world for ransom and propel its profits into the stratosphere. Trip’s job just went from dangerous to downright deadly.
THE VEGAS KID
A young man has finally found success having just sold his life story as a child gambling prodigy to the movies. Now, he is eloping with the girl he loves. But when he returns to Las Vegas for his wedding on Christmas Eve, fate puts he and his fiancé back into the very casino hotel room where he spent his strange childhood.
A FRIENDLY GAME
A top L.A. homicide detective and his partner amuse their poker buddies by playing “Perfect Murder” in which they use their vast knowledge to plot the phantom murders of well-known people. When one unpopular poker player turns up murdered by the exact means drawn out by the detective, he must uncover the murderer and exonerate himself, delving into the dark secrets of his “buddies” and their “friendly game”.
FIRST LIFE
Controversial community leader and attorney Jack Lebarron is the darling of the Christian right in Georgia, renowned for his panache to create “events” that draw national attention and further the fundamentalist agenda. When his daring and ambition entice him to pursue a scheme to purchase a life insurance policy for his unborn baby, he throws himself and his earnestly devout wife into a dangerous circus populated by both his enemies and his fanatic supporters.
THE RADS
After a nuclear catastrophe, a high-powered, self- serving American CEO doing business in the Middle East is forced into duty as a humanitarian hero when he is discovered to be a “Rad”, one of a handful out of millions who is highly immune to the effects of radiation and capable of returning to the radioactive wasteland to avert an even greater disaster.
BEYOND KEY WEST
An Orlando talent agent must face the repressed past she has tried to bury when she goes on a wild road trip to Key West in order to keep her manic depressive sister from marrying a stranger she has picked up along the road. Soon, the agent begins to realize there is something terribly wrong with the charming, but aloof stranger who may or may not be a serial killer on a cross country killing spree.
THE CHILL WIND
(Feature-Length Pilot and Series concept) strikes fear in the spirit of The Night Gallery and Tales of the Unexpected. The thought-provoking series captivates viewers with stories of murder, suspense and horror in which man is pitted against man, nature and the supernatural. In each tale, a sudden “chill wind” rises out of nowhere — marking the beginning of the protagonists’ hellish journey into dark and deadly places that will terrify viewers.
Books
Florida Bound
Collected Plays by WM. S. Leavengood: Florida Crackers, What Is Art?, 17 Black, Spacehunter, Dinosaur Limbo, Day Of The Onondaga, Truck Stop Parking Lot. “There is a question mark I keep in a box, With locks and locks and locks and locks” Every drama should be a kind of mystery in which audiences are not “told,” but rather are given a myriad of clues which lead them to deductions about the characters… Purchase a copy of Florida Bound $19.95 plus $3.98 shipping and handling
Cat Moon Do
Cat Moon Do takes the reader on a fantastic voyage with three cats searching for their lost friend, Seventoes. Worried, the three feline friends embark on an exciting journey traveling through magical lands trying to find their missing companion. Children of all ages will enjoy this tale as they carefully search the drawings for hidden clues to the mystery. Purchase a copy of Cat Moon Do $19.95 plus $3.98 shipping and handling
Interested in one of our books?
Contact us via email to request a copy.