Career
She was founding artistic director of the Nevada Shakespeare Company, from which she retired in 2008.
Simpson appeared in the American premier of the one-woman play, Shakespeare's Will, by Canadian playwright, Vern Thiessen. The production was presented by Theatre 40 in Beverly Hills, California, and was produced by Leonard Nimoy.
In one of his few American directing projects, Tony Award winner, Zakes Mokae cast Simpson as Elsa in Athol Fugard's The Road to Mecca in 2003. The production was a collaboration between the Nevada Shakespeare Company and the Nevada Conservatory Theatre, based at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas.
She starred in the film version of her play, A Single Woman, based on the life of first US Congresswoman and lifelong pacifist, Jeannette Rankin. The film was produced by Heroica Films and directed by Kamala Lopez, a cousin of Simpson's. Though the project includes the voices of many celebrities, including Martin Sheen, Peter Coyote, Judd Nelson and Patricia Arquette and includes in its soundtrack the iconic Joni Mitchell songs Woodstock and Circle Game, the film has not been picked up by a distributor, nor has it had a theatrical release. Simpson was disappointed with the film, and in October 2011 she is quoted in the Huffington Post saying of it, "That's probably the biggest disappointment of my life."
In September 2009, Simpson opened in Tucson, Arizona in the one-woman show, Coming In Hot, based on the book Powder: writing by women in the ranks from Vietnam to Iraq. The show subsequently toured extensively, and garnered praise and also a fair amount of criticism by peace activists who thought it glorified war.
Read more about this topic: Jeanmarie Simpson
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