Many playwrights only dream of having their work performed in front of an audience in New York City. Sure, there are plenty of ways to get your play out there, but to have your work performed off-Broadway, just a few blocks from the Great White Way, is an enormous accomplishment.

 

For one Chaminade alumnus, however, this dream has come true. On Saturday, July 11, 2009, nine Tarmacians accompanied Tarmac moderator Bro. Stephen Balletta to New York City to take in a performance of Levittown, a play by Marc Palmieri, a member of the Class of 1989.

 

During his formative years here at Chaminade, Mr. Palmieri was, in his own words, “all about baseball.” In fact, the young Palmieri was so good at baseball that it took him to Wake Forest University on an athletic scholarship. The Toronto Blue Jays had drafted Marc during his senior year at Chaminade, but he turned the offer down in favor of the athletic scholarship.

 

While at college, Marc gradually immersed himself in the theater culture, first as an audience member and then as a full-fledged participant, acting and working behind the scenes.

 

After his graduation from college, Marc moved to Manhattan, trying to find work as an actor. As he looked for work on the stage, Marc discovered two additional passions in his life, namely, writing and teaching.

 

But Marc was still passionate about baseball as well. Working part-time at Chaminade as an assistant baseball coach, Palmieri wrote his first play, Poor Fellas, a series of sketches, on the train ride between Penn Station and Mineola every day.

He wrote his sketches on a yellow legal pad, and they eventually became a collection of one-acts, published by Dramatists Play Service.

 

When he was a student at Chaminade, Palmieri was not a member of the Drama Club, although, looking back, he wishes he had been.

 

His decision several years later to choose theater over baseball came somewhat naturally to him. “As an athlete, I came to a rather natural end of my playing days in college. I played baseball for four years at Wake Forest. I wasn’t drafted again, and so the only ‘real’ choice I made was not pursuing tryouts or signing as a free agent.”

Meanwhile, Marc had just discovered a real interest in theater. “I’d seen some plays in college. I took an acting class. I even worked backstage at a Long Island community theater production of The Pajama Game.

 

“My job was pulling the curtain open and closed,” Marc recalls with a chuckle.

“The idea of having so much time, for the first time in my life, not dominated by baseball – time I could devote to this new interest – made my good-bye to playing baseball something pleasurable rather than hurtful. I missed it, but I had something new.

 

“And in the end,” Marc admits, “the new thing was better for me. Theater has all the elements I loved about sports, and then some: the teamwork, the physical rigor, the routine of practice and execution, the performance, and the great personalities one gets to know.

 

“What I didn’t miss was how much depended on my arm being healthy, or the pressure to end up a ‘winner’ and not a ‘loser.’ Believe me, the theater and writing industries are competitive, but not in the same way as sports.

“There is so much to gain from an artistic project, no matter the size,” Marc explains. “There’s nothing to ‘win’ but the feeling of doing something meaningful – and doing it with excellence.”

 

Marc’s years as a Flyer were fairly typical. His emotions varied from day to day, sometimes scared, sometimes confused, and sometimes thrilled. Over the course of his four years, Marc remembers, he learned how to communicate better and to hand things in on time.

 

“That’s a big plus in the real world,” Marc points out.

In retrospect, Marc wishes he had achieved a better balance between theater and baseball. Coaching baseball at his alma mater, however, provided Marc with the balance he had been seeking for so long.

 

Since graduating from Chaminade, Marc has become friends with many members of the faculty. “I have been very grateful for the friendships I’ve developed with the faculty since graduation. You may not realize it while you’re in school, but Marianists are pretty cool.”

 

This past summer, Levittown, another of Marc’s plays, enjoyed a brief run at the 160-seat off-Broadway Theatre at St. Clement’s, on West 46th Street in New York City. Cliplight Theatre, of which Palmieri is a founding member, produced the show, in conjunction with St. Clement’s.

 

Levittown is a domestic drama that takes place, as its name would suggest, in Levittown, Long Island. Marc had written several forms of drama for both the stage and the screen, but had yet to tackle the genre of the domestic drama, often nicknamed “kitchen-sink drama” by those in the theater industry. Because of the raw emotions that it exposes, many consider the domestic drama one of the most difficult types of plays to write.

 

In Levittown, Kevin, a bright-eyed student who has just returned home from college, finds out that his sister has recently become engaged. All is happy and fine until Kevin, the eternal optimist, decides to try to reunite Colleen, his sister, with their father, to whom she has not spoken in years.

 

Colleen agrees to the meeting, which goes horribly wrong, threatening to derail her engagement, her sanity, and the fragile relationships of the other family members.

With its combination of earthy humor and emotional outbursts, Levittown had the audience by turns laughing, angry, shocked, and incredulous.

 

As students of history know, Levittown was founded in 1947 as a low-cost housing development for World War II veterans. Marketed as an icon of “the American Dream,” Levittown was a place where a family could move and be happy for the rest of their lives.

 

Instead of domestic happiness, however, many of the veterans who moved to Levittown found their lives haunted by gruesome memories of warfare on the frontlines.

Such was the case with Palmieri’s own grandfather, who moved into one of the original houses built by William Levitt and Sons. Edmund, the patriarch of the Levittown family, is modeled after Marc’s grandfather.

 

Marc had always suspected that his grandfather had a traumatic war story behind him, but Marc’s grandfather kept the grisly details concealed for most of his adult life.

“It was a shocking and horrible story, and I was amazed that I never knew this about him,” Marc explains. “I wondered what impact this trauma had on him after the war – on his faith, or on how he raised his family.”

 

“I just felt there was much dramatic fodder there, and so that was how it began,” says Palmieri of what got the creative juices flowing for Levittown.

 

Regarding the theater critics and their reviews of his plays, Marc has learned to adopt a philosophical perspective. “I’ve been fortunate to have had every conceivable type of review written about my plays. I’m talking total pan to declaration of greatness.

“At one point, when I was just starting, when Poor Fellas was running in Midtown, I would be grateful just to have one critic write something,” Marc recalls. “I’m very grateful for that.

 

“As for Levittown, I can say the same: I have had every kind of review. There’ve been two productions, so there are even reviews published by the same magazine or newspaper that say two totally different things.

 

“Everyone in New York theater cares about The New York Times. Thankfully, the Times was good to us last summer. We got a huge feature in the Sunday Arts section and a ‘Critic’s Pick’ review. So I’m satisfied.

 

“How do I react [to the critics]? Well, in the moment, if the review is negative, I get mad, but then I really don’t care because I know others will counter and say different things. Then I’m happy. In the end, I’m grateful for all the attention the plays are getting.”

 

What’s next for Marc Palmieri and Levittown? Only time will tell. For now, he is teaching playwriting, Shakespeare, creative writing, and world humanities at the City College of New York. But if the invitation comes to stage Levittown on Broadway, Marc will be more than happy to accept the challenge.

 

Upper Photo: Trevor Pirro ’10, Matt Hughes ’10, Tyler White ’10, Cody Abbey ’10, Allen Buzzeo ’10, Marc Palmieri ’89, Jon Dornbush ’10, Chris Widmer ’10, Kevin Berry ’11, Mike Bucaria ’10 gather outside the Theatre at St. Clement’s after the July 11th performance of Levittown.

 

Lower Photo: Marc Palmieri ’89