William Leavengood – Film Writer/Director

Personal Bio

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 What Is Art? at GeVa Theatre; Money Maker at the Heather Theater; Webb’s City: The Musical at the Mahaffey Theater; 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.

Most recently, his song and dance political satire, Drilled! The Musical, was produced at the Palladium’s Side-Door Cabaret; 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, Password: Magnolia, and Almost Light were produced in New York by New Circle Theater Company’s during there 2019 and 2020 season.

Awards include major playwriting grants from the Berilla Kerr Foundation; the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs and a 2017 Creative Pinellas Returning Artist’s Grant. 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; and four Best of the Bay Playwright honors from Creative Loafing, Tampa Bay. More information at www.billleavengood.com.