James Lecesne will forgive you if you think his one-man Off-Broadway show, “ The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey,” is based on a true story.
The actor-author-playwright says it’s the most common question he’s asked by audiences who’ve seen the show, which is currently playing at New York’s Westside Theatre. But it’s also indicative of the cultural timeliness of Lecesne’s words. The central character, Leonard Pelkey, is a 14-year-old described in the play as being “known for his joyous spirit and a flamboyant sense of style” and has immediate parallels to Matthew Shepard and Tyler Clementi, among other victims of anti-gay bullying.
Best known as the co-founder of The Trevor Project, Lecesne, 60, has a lengthy stage resumé that includes a stint in the 2012 Broadway revival of Gore Vidal's “The Best Man,” starring James Earl Jones and Angela Lansbury. In “The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey,” Lecesne nails the seemingly daunting task of inhabiting nine individual residents of a south New Jersey town, including a police detective, an awkward teen girl and a wisecracking elderly woman, over the course of 70 minutes while never leaving the stage. Leonard himself never speaks or appears in the show, which requires the audience to form their own take on his persona based on the impact he has made on his hometown, as described by each character.
Lecense, who based the show on his 2008 novel Absolute Brightness, brings humanity and surprising nuance to each of his characterizations.
“Inhabiting those lives myself… I just felt it would resonate in a more distinct way, as if a piece of each one of those characters is in the audience,” he told The Huffington Post in an interview. “All of the different viewpoints and experiences lie in each one of us.”
He’s got some experience in both the form and the subject: his one-man show, “Word of Mouth,” was adapted into 1994's “Trevor,” an Oscar-winning short film about a gay 13-year-old who commits suicide. The success of "Trevor" led Lecense and producers Peggy Rajski and Randy Stone to establish The Trevor Project, the LGBT suicide prevention organization which has been supported by the likes of Ellen DeGeneres, Anderson Cooper and Kim Kardashian, among others.
Since it was founded in 1998, The Trevor Project has aimed to create a safe space for LGBT teens and young adults when they are facing personal challenges. In some respects, Lecesne would like “The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey” to accomplish theatrically what The Trevor Project achieves on a national scale, and says he hopes the show will create conversation around the obstacles many young people face as they are coming into their own identity.
While Absolute Brightness was geared toward young adult readers, Lecesne wanted to adapt its anti-bullying message for a more mature audience when he developed it for the stage. He re-structured the narrative to focus on Chuck DeSantis, a middle-aged detective, rather than 16-year-old Phoebe, as in the book. The peer isolation that Leonard experiences before his death is primarily described by adults onstage rather than fellow teens, stressing the universality of bullying as an issue. However, the show isn’t all gloom-and-doom and features some comedic, laugh-out-loud moments that keep it from becoming maudlin.
Although the LGBT community has made great strides toward equality over the past several years, Lecesne said he wants “The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey” to resound beyond the confines of what he describes as “the liberal, progressive community” who believes “we’ve moved on” by now.
“I wanted to get a group of adults in a room and get them to think about not only what they can do for young people, but what they can do for themselves,” he said, noting that he'd welcome the chance to adapt the show for the screen and to have it licensed by school and community theater troupes. “In [many] communities, kids are really in a quandary. They see the world changing, but for them, it's not changing, and that divide is so gigantic.”
James Lecesne stars in “The Absolute Brightness of Leonard Pelkey” at New York's Westside Theatre through Nov. 1. Head here for more details.
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