It's looking like the LiveArts Peninsula Foundation is going to be a real force for good in the culture of the Tampa Bay area. After a successful offering of Bill Leavengood's Webb's City: The Musical and a likable if overlong visit to Bob Devin Jones' Manhattan Casino, LiveArts is now presenting, in partnership with American Stage, The Floridians, a celebration of renowned and (relatively) obscure residents of the Sunshine State.
I've been to all three evenings into which The Floridians is divided, and I can happily report that there's something to like in most of the segments, plus a few newly penned songs that are worth re-hearing. I won't claim that The Floridians is entirely without weaknesses, but at its best, this is engaging biography, fascinating history and memorable theater. At its best, The Floridians is a real contribution to our self-knowledge.
Perhaps the most stirring of the one-acts being offered at American Stage is Harry T. Moore: The Most Hated Man in Florida, written by Larry Parr and featuring the multitalented Bob Devin Jones in the title role. Standing in front of the three panels that form the backdrop of Christopher James' set — panels covered with old ads for Florida and some photographs — Moore tells us how he, an African-American schoolteacher, got so involved in Southern politics that he became hated all up and down white Florida.
Basically, his offense was signing up thousands of black voters, until there were more of them in Florida than in any other state. When white politicians countered with a literacy test, Moore filed suit — and was fired from his teaching position. He became the first full-time field officer for the NAACP, and was trying to get justice for the families of several black men falsely accused of rape, when — a voice-over tells us — he and his wife were killed by a bomb placed under their bedroom. Thus Moore became, we're told, the first martyr of the civil rights movement. When we leave this quietly disquieting play, we have to wonder: How is it that we didn't know about this Florida hero till now?
The rights of the under-represented are also the subject of another fine one-act, Special, by Bill Leavengood. In this monologue, the delightful Victoria Baumann plays Mary Tilford, a present-day special education teacher who, in spite of nay-sayers, stars her students in challenging theatricals. Delivering Leavengood's ingratiating lines with warmth and spark, Baumann/Tilford tells us how it was in Deltona, outside of Orlando, that she first got the idea of involving her mentally handicapped students in The Wizard of Oz. Along the way there were hilarious glitches ("Rehearsal," she says, means "repetition to the point of lunacy, times 10"), and at intervals she wondered "What's the point? What am I doing with my life? What am I doing for them?"
But on opening night, The Wizard of Oz was a great, flawed success. And after it was written up in the Orlando Sentinel, Tilford got a grant to travel the state with the show. At the end of this segment — which is about 10 minutes too long, but otherwise satisfying — Tilford leaves us to think of the signs on her blackboard: "Believe in Yourself," "If you think Education is Expensive, try Ignorance," and "Never, never, never, ever give up." As we were with Harry T. Moore, we're impressed with the persistent moral courage Tilford shows, and at her dedication to something outside herself. This is a formidable woman — and a fine play.
Three other segments of The Floridians also deserve favorable mention, even if they're not quite of the quality of Most Hated Man and Special. Rednecks with Shaved Heads, by Lila Donnolo, is about skinhead Benjamin Clayton Lee, played kinetically by Stephen Ray. The power of this scene isn't so much in its content — Lee telling us about the three different types of skinhead and about the history of skinheadism — as it is in Ray's wonderful, nervous, unpredictable acting. I Got 'Em! is an entertaining play by Bob Devin Jones, on the subject of peanut salesman Elijah Moore (played by the author) and his life in a difficult society. And Travels in Paradise by M. G. Updegraff gives us novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe (Nan Colton) in the year 1887, reminiscing about the Florida she loves.
A fourth play, Johnnie Brown by Doug Cooney, never really ignites. It's about the monkey (Barry Hamilton) owned by an eccentric Palm Beach millionaire, and the simian's relationship with the wealthy man's cook (Kamara Michelle Cooper). The problems here are in the script and the acting: The former never rises far above trivial patter, and the latter is uneven, with strange pauses and broken rhythms. Finally, this is a case where the playwright seems to have chosen a subject about which he had little to say. So for us in the audience there's little to enjoy — and nothing to learn.
As for the songs which open every segment of the series — two songs per evening — the most interesting, lyrically and melodically, are "Tom Gaskins" by Peter B. Gallagher, "Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings" by Bonnie Whitehurst, and "Hurricane" by Danny Hamilton. Other elements of the production are of mixed quality: the direction — by Ami Sallee Corley, Bill Leavengood and Cemantha Crain — is generally laudable, though one has to wonder if Corley bears some responsibility for the Johnnie Brown inadequacies.
Speaking of inadequacies, James' set is rudimentary and unattractive; it doesn't detract very much from the best of the segments, but it surely doesn't enhance them either.
How could The Floridians be better? It could feature more plays with multiple characters (why be limited to monologues?) Aside from that, this offering is a real addition to the local theater scene. And it's further proof that LiveArts can make a real difference, not just in Bay area theater, but to the Bay area psyche. Art confers value on the object depicted; and so The Floridians, directly and by implication, confers value on us all, here on our not-so-fabled peninsula.
We can be worthy of art; that's the subtext of all these six one-acts.
Kudos to LiveArts and to American Stage for making that message plain.
Performance Critic Mark E. Leib can be reached at mark.leib@weeklyplanet.com or 813-248-8888 ext. 305.
This article appears in Aug 28 – Sep 4, 2003.