LiveArts*
Presents

Crossing the Bay
A New Musical from the creators of
Webb's City: The Musical

A Classic Romance is transformed into a great American musical!

Crossing the Bay marries local history to the wit and romance of Jane Austen, in a tuneful retelling of her most popular novel, Pride and Prejudice. Crossing the Bay is a funny, touching and romantic new musical comedy that will leave you humming the tunes and feeling proud to be a Floridian!

LiveArts, Florida’s leading producers of original theater projects, commissioned the new musical and will produce it in St. Petersburg and Tampa in January 2005.

Tampa composer/lyricist Lee Ahlin and St. Petersburg playwright Bill Leavengood have dramatized the struggle to bring the railroad to the wilderness of the Pinellas Peninsula. The outcome would profoundly affect the future of the area, turning a swampy wilderness into one of most popular places in the world to live and visit.

Crossing the Bay is played against the backdrop of Post-Civil War Florida. It makes good natured fun of the rivalry that has existed between Hillsborough and Pinellas counties from the start. Railroad and shipping magnates Henry B. Plant and Hamilton Disston vied for the power and prestige that came with bringing the railway to undeveloped Florida.

Bill Leavengood’s wife, Diana Lucas Leavengood, introduced him to film adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels during their courtship. Bill was particularly taken with “Pride & Prejudice” and felt the rich, sharply drawn characters would translate well to the musical theater form.

“I love writing for characters that are unwilling or unable to fully and honestly express their desire, anger, fear and frustration. Jane Austen does this beautifully, working within the structure and restrictions of British society and the class system. All is politeness and decorum, despite what might be broiling underneath. I feel that traditional Southerners, particularly Southern women, interact within their society in a very similar manner.”

In Post-Civil War Florida in the 1880’s, Tampa was a bustling new city thanks in a large part to Henry B. Plant, who brought the railroad and shipping to Tampa Harbor. St. Petersburg was nothing but a little fishing village called Wardsville. Hamilton Disston, a Philadelphia saw maker, had become the largest landowner in America overnight. He bailed the Florida government out of debt and for his million dollars, received four million acres of the state of Florida.

Disston was bent on bringing his own railway to Disston City, where Gulfport is located today, believing he would one day turn it into the greatest metropolis in the state. He partnered with Peter Demens and his Orange Belt Railroad, and began building toward the Gulf of Mexico from Apopka.

“At this time in history, you had these wealthy northern empire builders buying up land and bringing the railroad to the wilds of Florida,” says Leavengood. “You also had the down trodden Southerners, many fallen from greatness after the war, others who were struggling pioneer farmers to begin with. In these two disparate groups, I saw parallels to Jane Austen’s London aristocracy and provincial middle class.”

The Bennett Family from “Pride & Prejudice” becomes the Tippetts family whose farm on the Pinellas Peninsula is failing and about to be inherited by their posturing, sycophant step-cousin, the Reverend Amos Adnoyd. Mrs. Tippetts is desperate to marry off her two daughters as the only means of saving the family, even if the husband has to be their reviled step-cousin.

Adnoyd, the equivalent of Jane Austen’s Mr. Collins, gushes incessantly about the great patron of his Tampa church, Mr. H.B. Plant (the equivalent of Jane Austen’s Lady Catherine de Berg). Enter the incarnations of Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy, represented in Crossing the Bay by Frederick Disston and Colin Plant, the fictional nephews of the real-life Hamilton Disston and Henry B. Plant.

“The match worked so well. The book from the musical absolutely flowed out of me,” says Leavengood.

Lee Ahlin, renowned in the Tampa Bay area as the composer of Webb’s City: The Musical and eight of American Stage in the Park musical adaptations of Shakespeare, has penned 14 original songs. “The music style reflects the style of the places, from a country ballads and foot stomping hoedowns in rural Pinellas, to the gentle waltzes of the ballroom at the Tampa Bay Hotel, to the pounding rhythm of industry on the Tampa wharf.”

Crossing the Bay premiers in St. Petersburg January 6-23, 2005 at the new 600-seat, Janet Root Theatre on the campus of Shorecrest Preparatory, then crosses the bay for a one week run at the 680 seat Falk Theater in Tampa, Jan. 26-30. For more information, please contact Harry Chittenden at LiveArts, 727-565-0196.

*Article by: Kate Duffy, Harry Chittenden & Bill Leavengood