Levy Lee Simon comes back home to sweet Harlem
Actor, playwright, director and producer Levy Lee Simon, Jr. reserved space at Harlem’s Lenox Saphire for a joyous celebration! Childhood friends, actors, technicians, producers, journalists and theatre associates convened to meet, greet and mingle. It had been three years since Levy Lee “needed to come home” to Harlem, also bringing his play “The Last Revolutionary” to New York’s Labyrinth Theatre Company for a staged reading and talk back. December 9th, 2013 marks the third anniversary of Levy Lee’s open-heart surgery at U.C.L.A.’ s Medical Center. An irregular heartbeat was detected eight years prior during a routine examination. Cardiac myopathy, “an overly thick heart,” is a condition known to cause student athletes drop dead on the playing field. Levy Lee’s condition was exacerbated by years of high school and college track and football.
After four years of taking beta-receptor medication to lower blood pressure, regulate contractions to prevent a heart attack, Levy Lee’s options were: alcohol abrasion, implant or open heart surgery, he opted for the later. During an eight hour surgery Levy Lee recalls an “outer body experience,” hearing the head surgeon say, “We’re loosing him,” and being told to “breathe out.” Levy Lee says it felt as if something was stuck in his throat and remembers exhaling. Levy Lee told his world class surgical team he was in “God’s hands,” considering all the “wear and tear” he had placed on his heart over the years, “we’re just passing through” and whether he lived or died, “God’s got me.”
Levy Lee’s theatrical journey at Cheney State College began in the 1980s with Charles Lawrence “Larry” Moses, who died from complications of heart disease (1951-2012). Home in Harlem Levy Lee trained with Gertrude Jeanette’s Arts and Culture and H.A.D.L.E.Y. Players. He worked with Ernie McClintock’s (1937-2003) 127th Street Repertory. Other New York theatre affiliates include Charles Turner and Nathan George at the Henry Street Settlement and Ed DeShae and Douglas Turner Ward with the Negro Ensemble Company. Levy Lee is a founding member of O’LAC Repertory Ensemble and Blue Nile International with Nathan George. Previous east coast visits Levy Lee included being “honored” to have Harlem’s National Black Theatre founder Barbara Ann Teer (1937-2008) and New Jersey’s Poet Laureate Amiri Baraka (1934-2014) in his audience and both “enjoying” his play “The Stuttering Preacher” produced by Woodie King at the New Federal Theatre (2006), where the playwright played the main character.
In the 1990s Levy Lee studied acting and playwriting at the Circle Repertory LAB, where he studied with Michael Warren Powell, Tania Berezin and Lanford Wilson.
Levy Lee began writing wrote his first play, “In the Bubbling Tar,” at Harlem’s Frank Silvera’s Writing Workshop. His first major production was his play “God, the Crackhouse and the Devil” at Circle Repertory. Levy Lee earned a MFA in playwriting at the University of Iowa (1999). Levy Lee’s route to Los Angeles Valley came by way of Iowa. He won the Lorraine Hansberry Award from the John F. Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, for his play “The Bow-Wow Club.” The award recognizes “outstanding plays written by students of African or diaspora descent (that) best express the African American experience.”
The “Bow-Wow Club” caught Hollywood’s attention. First 20th Century Fox, then Fox Search Light, with Forest Whittaker as main producer (1999-2000). While shopping Levy Lee’s story his literary agent was involved in a near fatal car accident (2001). Though the project lost its initial momentum, occasionally receives calls of interest, most recently Will Smith (2014).
Levy Lee’s move to Studio City in North Hollywood includes productions of his plays For the Love of Freedom: Trilogy of the Haitian Revolution: Toussaint, Dessalines and Christophe (1997) by Danny Glover’s Robey Theatre (2001-2002). To date, Levy Lee’s has acting in over 60 stage productions, authored 19 plays with 35 productions 9 screenplays with 4 options and 4 teleplay treatments and teaches acting and writing at L.A.’s “Lion’s Den.” While California offers “good, healthy eating of fresh fish, produce,” but L.A.’s beautiful scenery, detached houses with manicured lawns is perceived as “deceptive” and “more dangerous,” when seemingly “out of no where” there’s a “whoopty” and passengers with blue head rags with “murder one looks” on their faces, unlike the reputation of New York’s “projects.”
Levy Lee’s most recent project is the film version of his play “The Last Revolutionary” (2011), was inspired through conversations with former Black Panther Jamal Joseph, director of “Chapter and Verse” (2015). After several readings of the play in N. Y. and L.A. and a performance at the 2015 National Black Theatre Festival, Levy Lee was approached by director Michael Brewer to produce a film version of “The Last Revolutionary.” In March 2016 a Kick Starter raised $15,000.00 and $5,000.00 in donations. Shot in L.A., Filmed in L.A., “The Last Revolutionary co-stars John Marshal Jones as Jack Armstrong and Levy Lee Simon as Mac Perkins, with a cameo by Marla Gibbs as “the lady with the dog.” Postproduction should be complete October 2016, with plans to submit the movie to among others, Sundance, Tribeca and Cannes Film Festival. Another play being developed as an independent film is “God, the Crack House and the Devil,” Onika Day, producer, Hollis Meminger, director.
Levy Lee’s most recent N.Y. visit, he was presented with a football from his Julia Richmond team at a memorial for their coach Ollie Calvin who passed March 2016.. Home had a familiar but also “surreal” feel, as if he were a tourist. New places and a lot of white faces, new stores, taverns and night clubs.” The weekend before returning to L.A., Levy Lee reserved a venue where he “could see his people.” Harlem’s Lenox Saphire’s Senegalese owner made him feel welcomed, offering good food, the music wasn’t invasive, you didn’t have to yell to be heard, and a dance floor. Levy Lee says, “it’s a good feeling” to be courted by childhood friends and theatre folks. It was and awesome event. Prayerfully next visit he will bless N.Y. and bring his “Lion’s Den” home to Harlem.
- Levy Lee Simon comes back home to sweet Harlem - 11/09/2016