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Jeanmarie Simpson Bishop

Birth Place: Ray, Arizona

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BIO

Jeanmarie (Simpson) Bishop has been a BWW contributor in Tucson, Reno/Sacramento and Toronto, before landing in Phoenix. She was born in rural Arizona in 1959. Her family moved to Toronto in 1970 and she fell in love with the theatre after seeing, with her 7th grade class, the legendary production of Godspell (featuring Gilda Radner, Eugene Levy and Martin Short). She performed dozens of roles in regional theatre and stock in the US and Canada and began directing while still in her teens. Jeanmarie is Founding Artistic Director of the Nevada Shakespeare Company (NSC), from which she retired in 2008. With NSC she directed many projects, wrote original works and played myriad parts including Maud Gonne in Sailing to Byzantium, Gertrude in Hamlet, Lady M in Macbeth and Elsa in The Road to Mecca, directed by Zakes Mokae. Jeanmarie wrote and performed 263 times (including a run Off-Broadway) the play A Single Woman, about the life of first US Congresswoman and lifelong pacifist, Jeannette Rankin. She also starred in the film version that featured Judd Nelson, the voices of Martin Sheen and Patricia Arquette and the music of Joni Mitchell. In 2007, she appeared at the historic Beverly Hills Theatre 40 in the American premiere of the solo tour-de- force Shakespeare’s Will, produced by Leonard Nimoy. Jeanmarie is a cradle Catholic, a Quaker and lifetime member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). While attending a December 2008 meeting of WILPF’s Tucson branch, she met Shannon Cain, co-editor of the anthology Powder: writing by women in the ranks from Vietnam to Iraq. The two quickly agreed that the book could make a fine theatre piece, and Coming In Hot was conceived. Following an adaptation and rehearsal period of nine months, the play opened at Tucson’s Rhythm Industry Performance Factory. Simpson began an international tour of Coming In Hot in March of 2010, taking it throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. She was commissioned by the Be the Change project to create a piece based on interviews with Dreamers; Liberty’s Children premiered at the Potentialist Workshop in Reno, Nevada in March 2014. She toured with Mary’s Joy from 2011-2014. She was denied entry at England’s Heathrow airport in February 2015, after which she took a hiatus from theatre for 18 months. She now performs the play under a new title, The Joy. She lives with her husband, Dan, in a cottage with a garden in Glendale, Arizona.

News


Feature: Stage Reading Set for WHEN CHURCHYARDS YAWN: A Divine Comedy

The script is clever, replete with snide banter befitting a satire of the Bard’s illustrious tragedy. We meet the usual suspects - the upright, the guilty, and the aggrieved - primed to settle a score or two. As they move through various gates and a chaotic mess of random earthly objects, actors are made to piece together a set of uneven stairs, a theatrical metaphor inspired by the work of Polish theater artist Tadeusz Kantor.
Arizona Theatre Matters' Summer Festival Begins Today!

The Arizona Theatre Matters' summer festival launches today, with performances continuing through July 31. 
ATM Productions Bursts Onto The Virtual Stage With Expanded Online Festival

Radically inclusive, ATM Productions has the whole world as a stage by converting their annual Fall Festival to a completely online affair.
Dramatists Guild Footlights Series Returns February 8 With PINEAPPLE AND OTHER OPTIONS

A reading of Jeanmarie Simpson's Pineapple and Other Options will be presented on February 8th at 11 a.m. At Metropolitan Arts Institute 1700 N. 7th Ave.
Wendy Warwick White Joins AZ Theatre Matters As Co-Artistic Director

Jeanmarie (Simpson) Bishop, Founding Artistic Director of Arizona Theatre Matters, refers to incoming Co-Artistic Director Wendy Warwick White as 'the ultimate renaissance woman.'
Arizona Theatre Matters Announces A Call For Artists For We Ain't Done Yet Theatre Festival

Arizona Theatre Matters announces a call for actors, directors and playwrights, for their first annual We Ain't Done Yet Theatre Festival at the Phoenix Center for the Arts, 9am-10pm November 9, 2019.
Perovich Joins B3's A WOMAN ON STAGE Pay-What-You-Can Matinee March 18th

Widely lauded as a director, teacher and playwright, John Perovich will facilitate an unique and exciting discussion following the March 18th matinee of A Woman on Stage.
Now & Then Presents THE JOY Todayth At Metro Arts

Playwright Jeanmarie (Simpson) Bishop's 2011 solo work, The Joy seems eerily appropriate for development by one of the Valley's most up and coming new theatre companies. John Perovich, founding Artistic Director of Now & Then Creative Company, serves as the project's dramaturg.
Language is the Heart of the Matter in THE JOY at Metro Arts

'One of the reasons I initially was attracted to the piece was the language,' Laurelann Porter said. 'Perhaps because the playwright made careful effort to write in the style of language that was used at the time, and the formality of the language, it feels almost poetic, or like elevated text. I feel similarly about the language of Edgar Allen Poe. I've been working on the Poe Fest for about 6 years now and each year I fall more in love with his careful and deliberate way he crafts language poetically. This piece has a similar quality. The language is purposeful and clear. And the message is carried in descriptive prose that evokes visceral sensations.'
Now & Then Presents THE JOY January 19th At Metro Arts

Playwright Jeanmarie (Simpson) Bishop's 2011 solo work, The Joy seems eerily appropriate for development by one of the Valley's most up and coming new theatre companies. John Perovich, founding Artistic Director of Now & Then Creative Company, serves as the project's dramaturg.
THE JOY Rises Again in Phoenix

The Joy, Jeanmarie (Simpson) Bishop's celebrated solo work, rises again in Phoenix on January 19th at the Metropolitan Arts Institute at 7:30 pm.
New Short Play 'MOTHER AND SON' Seeks Actors for Phoenix Art Museum Run

Director, Jeanmarie (Simpson) Bishop, is interviewing actors for a new short play to be performed at the Phoenix Art Museum on the 10th and 11th of February 2018.
BWW Feature: Mark and Ryan Kleinman, Living the Dream

I am incredibly proud of all my kids and Ryan is pursuing his dream as a performer. He has been performing for quite awhile now as a professional and I have had the idea that this would be so since about his Junior year in High School. I have always taken the time to include my kids (when they have shown an interest) into the shows I was doing. Ryan and his older sister, Kaitlynn, were able to be more inundated with it at a young age as I was more active as a professional performer and they got to be backstage and at rehearsal, and often in shows with me. Whenever I was in a show that needed kids, I got them an audition and, since they were talented, often got cast, so we were able to share the stage. Sound of Music, South Pacific, Music Man, Secret Garden, A Christmas Carol, all shows that my kids been able to share with me.
Glendale Theatre Company Seeks Performers with Disabilities

Universal Access Productions (UAP) seeks team members for 2017 programming in the West Valley.
Want Someone to Live Forever? Execute Her; THE JOY Comes to GLM Theatre Company

Renowned actor-playwright, Jeanmarie (Simpson) Bishop returns to Reno inThe Joy, a play about pre-First Amendment martyr, Mary Dyer.
Want Someone to Live Forever? Execute Her; THE JOY Comes to GLM Theatre Company

Renowned actor-playwright, Jeanmarie (Simpson) Bishop returns to Reno inThe Joy, a play about pre-First Amendment martyr, Mary Dyer.

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