There's a new local organization whose mandate is to support original theatre projects concerning the Tampa Bay area. And it's in the process of commissioning a new musical about a Jazz Age St. Petersburg night club. The LiveArts Peninsula Foundation, with Diana Leavengood as general manager, is talking with an as-yet-unnamed local writer about a piece celebrating the Manhattan Casino, which once stood on the south side of St. Petersburg and featured such headliners as Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington. The Manhattan Casino play is meant to be the second in a series of new works on Bay area subjects. The first is Webb's City, which opened last June under the aegis of the Pinellas County Millennium Celebration Committee, but is scheduled to be reprised as a LiveArts project at the Mahaffey Theater in November. Webb's City was written by local playwright and teacher Bill Leavengood, who also happens to be Diana Leavengood's husband. But the author LiveArts has approached about the Manhattan Casino musical is an unrelated third party.

Diana Leavengood says LiveArts "basically formed to bring back Webb's City. …" but "the people who came together to begin it thought for all this hard work, we should make the foundation do something other … and so we decided that the thing that we would do is nurture and create similar projects that celebrate the cultural history of St. Petersburg and Florida."

A pivotal contributor, Leavengood says, was United Trust Company of St. Petersburg and its president Ward Curtis; further money is currently being raised by chairman of the LiveArts board Sean Manning. Other members of the 26-person board include Kenneth Mitchell, artistic director of American Stage; David Rowell, executive director of the Mahaffey Theatre Foundation; Pinellas County Commissioner Barbara Sheen Todd; and St. Petersburg Times promotions coordinator Lee Ann Yeager.

Leavengood says that the foundation will try to work with, rather than compete against, local theaters: "For instance, we're not going to have a season, we're not looking to produce plays. We're looking to be yet another source for the theaters in this area to come to. Say American Stage wants to take a huge risk and do a play based on some sort of historical aspect of this area — they could come to us and say, we want to do that, help us — and we would. …We're not here to be yet one more theater company; we just want to be a clearinghouse for talent and good ideas and nurturing … local talent."

Leavengood, who in addition to film-making has long been a teacher at Shorecrest Preparatory School in St. Petersburg, has left that position to become the only full-time employee of LiveArts. And she says that husband Bill, who will return to teach at Shorecrest next year after a sabbatical (and who is listed on the LiveArts roster of "founding trustees") is also committed to encouraging other local writing talents: "Bill and (Webb's City composer) Lee (Ahlin) want to see other writers and composers thrive," she says. "That's the whole point, to nurture everybody else as well." But she feels sure that eventually LiveArts will support another Leavengood/Ahlin collaboration.

The LiveArts Peninsula Foundation can be reached at 727-565-0196.

In the Works at Stageworks. After last month's satisfying experience at the Museum of Science and Industry's Coleman Science Works Theater, Stageworks is contemplating a yearly production there on a science theme. "I think it's a perfect experimental space," says Stageworks producing director Anna Brennen about the MOSI theater where Keith Ferstl's play Roarin' Judy was produced from March 9-18. "I absolutely loved being there and the MOSI personnel were absolutely delightful to work with. We would actually like to use it at least once a year, and plan an annual event that hopefully will focus even more on what MOSI is about, i.e. science and issues of science addressed by the theater world. And those can be found; there are many plays."

Among the plays on science themes that Brennen is considering for the space are Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, Friedrich Durrenmatt's The Physicists, Tom Stoppard's Arcadia, and Bertolt Brecht's Galileo.

In other Stageworks news, the theater has postponed its production of Moliere's The Miser from the end of this season to the beginning of next. And of particular interest to area playwrights, Stageworks is now soliciting manuscripts for its 13th annual "Florida Briefs" and "Festival of Original Florida Plays" in July/August 2001.

The deadline for submission to "Briefs" is May 15; plays should be unproduced, no more than 15-20 pages, with a cast of five or fewer characters. Only one submission per playwright is acceptable, and minority playwrights and multi-racial casting are emphasized.

The deadline for submission to the "Festival of Original Florida Plays" is May 1. Plays should be unproduced, full-length works with no more than 8 cast members and minimal set and tech requirements.

Plays chosen for "Briefs" will be given a full production; those chosen for the full-length festival will receive a staged reading and a cash prize. Scripts should be sent along with a submission fee — $5 for "Briefs," $10 for full-length — to Stageworks at 120 Adriatic Ave., Tampa 33606.

Season for Heroes. American Stage has announced that its 2001-02 Mainstage season will have the theme "Acts of Courage and Uncommon Heroes." It's an interesting mix of plays that artistic director Ken Mitchell has selected: The first two have something of the ethnic mix of this year's intriguing lineup, a modern classic follows, and finally there's a couple of plays about celebrities. The plays and approximate dates are as follows: Zora Neale Hurston's Spunk, about African-Americans in Florida and Harlem, in September/October; Mark Harelik's The Immigrant, about a Jewish immigrant in rural Texas, in November/December; George Bernard Shaw's Candida in January/February 2002; Mark St. Germain's Camping with Henry and Tom, about Henry Ford, Thomas Edison and Warren G. Harding, in May/June 2002; and Claudia Shear's Dirty Blonde, about Mae West and her fans, in July/August 2002.

For more information and ticket reservations, call American Stage at 727-823-PLAY.

This article appears in Apr 12-18, 2001.