jeanmarie simpson

Jeanmarie Simpson wrote and performed her first solo show in Toronto in 1972. She wrote and performed hundreds of times (including Off-Broadway) A Single Woman about Jeannette Rankin, the first US Congresswoman. She performed the piece at CalArts as Surdna Distinguished Guest Artist in 2005 and starred in the film version that features Judd Nelson, the voices of Martin Sheen and Patricia Arquette, and Joni Mitchell’s music. After winning the Sacramento News and Review’s Best Theatrical Surprise award, A Single Woman toured 53 countries on five continents. Tony Award winner Zakes Mokae directed her as Elsa in his 2003 staging of The Road to Mecca, and in 2007, Leonard Nimoy directed her in the US premiere of Vern Thiessen’s solo tour-de-force, Shakespeare’s Will. She again toured the world with Coming In Hot, playing 19 military women. From 2011-19, she toured globally with her original solo performance HERETIC – the Mary Dyer story. In 2021, her play Pineapple and Other Options played in the Pandora New Works Festival and was staged and filmed in Phoenix, and her play The Jewish Question won Honorable Mention by the Jewish Plays Project. In 2022, she won a Living History Foundation grant for Bambino Mio – Bright Little Flame about Maria Montessori. She is the recipient of six Sierra Arts Foundation and twelve Nevada Arts Council grants to artists, a National Endowment for the Arts Theatre grant, and myriad other awards. Founding Artistic Director of Universal Access Productions/Arizona Theatre Matters, based in Arizona, Nevada, and on the company’s YouTube channel, she served on the panel for the 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Theatre Grants for Arts Projects. Jeanmarie is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographer’s Society, the Dramatists Guild of America, and is retired from Actors Equity Association and Screen Actors Guild/AFTRA.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND WEBSITE
Website: http://jeanmariesimpson.com

MORE ABOUT ME
From a long line of bilingual writer-editors and a long line of WASPS too polite to even read the kind of political journalism my mother’s people wrote, I clearly take after her side of the family. Growing up with a mother and grandmother to run to when I needed help writing was a luxury. Having the Spanish and English languages to play with, as well as the profoundly Yiddish-informed Brooklynese my mother spoke, gave me a love of language and permission to play with words. I came to look to those fierce critics, not for approval but for the sharpness and clarity my work needed regardless of form. In my mid-forties, I felt I had earned the right to fictionalize. I am a Feminist, and I’m drawn to the stories of strong women who prevailed in the face of discrimination and repression. My work is influenced by non-traditional staging techniques developed in Eastern Europe during times when resources were nonexistent, and theatre was a crime. I am an archaeologist of the collective soul discovered when I explore the lives and events of others – women who lived before running water, brick houses, and suffrage. Women inspire me when they step out of their assigned places and with my work, I aspire to cast light on their stories and, in the process, illuminate my own.

WHAT I'M WORKING ON
A Little Bumpy Air - a memoir about surviving childhood sexual assault, ongoing abuse and loss.

KEYWORDS
​Writer, Mother, Grandmother, Political, Historical, Queer, Jewish Latina.