ann timmons

Ann Timmons started in theatre as an actor (MFA, University of Illinois), and went to NYC to seek her fortune. Realizing there weren’t enough juicy roles for all the talented women who deserved them, she decided to create her own. She honed her writing skills at Playwrights’ Horizons Theatre School, produced her one-woman show, "Off the Wall: The Life and Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman” Off-Broadway, and toured with it nationally for 16 years. Other productions (including “Becoming Calvin,” Washington, D.C.; “Beyond Shadowlands,” national tour; “The Jamestown Adventure Express,” Virginia tour) continue her exploration of accepted history, featuring protagonists, mostly women who upend the status quo. The 2021 professional premiere production at Dallas’ Echo Theatre of “It’s My Party!” celebrated the suffragists who fought for the 19th Amendment. As a founding member of Pipeline Playwrights, Ann co-wrote and helped produced, “How’s That Workin’ Out for Ya?” and “How’s That Workin’ Out For Ya? 2.0” for the Capital Fringe Festival in Washington, D.C. She continues to produce with Pipeline Playwrights, as well as for First Acts at the First Presbyterian Church in New York City. Ann is a proud member of Actors' Equity Association, SAG-AFTRA, the Dramatists Guild, and Honor Roll!

WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Website: http://www.anntimmons.com
FB: ann.timmons
TW:@annspeaks
IG: @anncommsarts

MORE ABOUT ME
If I could bring one change? Well, it’s a BIG one: I would like theatre to be more accessible, for theatre artists as well as theatregoers. Not just in terms of physical--or even thematic--access. In my perfect world, theatre would not be divided between elitist, special-interest, and popular. There would be plays and shows for everyone, all the time, whatever their taste and current preoccupations. Going to the theatre wouldn’t necessarily be an “event” the way it is now. It would be more integral to everyday life. But how to do this? We live in a world where theatre professionals generally don’t get paid commensurate with other workers at the same level of experience, education, and training. So we’re talking about a different funding model. American theatre has largely operated as a capitalist venture, even from the beginning. So it would take a massive paradigm shift for this to happen. But I do dream of it: the day when the art will be judged on its own, not according to the marketability of the playwright. In the meantime, I have banded together with four other “older” women playwrights to form our own production collective, Pipeline Playwrights (www.pipelineplaywrights.org). We’re all writing and producing each other’s original shows. It is hard work, doing it all. And, we are constantly chasing individual donors as well as those elusive grants. But we are doing it – getting our work out there! And maybe one day, the funding gods will smile on us and we’ll reach a level of modest success, so we can produce more plays by an ever-expanding circle of women playwrights. And break the cycle of the making artistic choices based on the profit motive.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
A new play about Ida B. Wells and other women who were engines of societal change in early 20th century America.

KEYWORDS
​Political, historical, religious, biographical, period, societal, women, comedy of manners, family drama