When it comes to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge tragedy of 1980, Bill DeYoung is in the never forget camp.
In 2013, he wrote “Skyway,” a book about the stormy May morning when freighter pilot John Lerro crashed the “Summit Venture” into the Skyway, sending six cars, a pickup and Greyhound bus into Tampa Bay. In 2014, he finally got approval for a memorial remembering the 35 people who died that day, and this weekend DeYoung, a past contributor to Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, sees more of his research on the accident adapted for the stage when Roxanne Fay directs Michael Horn in “Mayday: Captain Lerro and the Skyway Bridge.
Lerro, who died in 2002, was at the helm of “Summit Venture” and consumed by guilt in the years after the accident; in three performances of this one-person play, Horn will work through much of the painful dialogue taken verbatim from Lerro’s court testimony, media interviews and personal correspondence.
Mayday: A World Premiere. Friday, June 25. 8 p.m. and Saturday June 26 at 2 p.m. & 8 p.m. $15-$20. Studio@620, 620 1st Ave. S, St. Petersburg. thestudioat620.org
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