Jeanmarie Simpson
Encyclopedia
Jeanmarie Simpson is an American peace activist
and theatre/film artist.
, Arizona
. Her parents are Maria Luisa Jugo, a Venezuela
n immigrant, and Donald Leroy Simpson, an American mining engineer. Jeanmarie Simpson was raised in rural
Arizona
. Her family's move to Toronto
, Canada
in 1970 led to her theatre training.
, 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
.
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 result, and in October of 2011 she is quoted in the Huffington Post saying of the film, "That's probably the biggest disappointment of my life."
In September of 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.
As of February 2011, Simpson toured with readings of Mary's Joy - the anatomy of a martyr, her play based on the life of Mary Dyer
, the first colonial woman to be executed in the New World. Dyer was hanged June 1, 1660, for being a Quaker and refusing to stay out of Boston, Massachusetts.
(WILPF), sitting on the National Board of the US Section as of June, 2006. She has been a pacifist and human rights/peace activist since 1984, when she observed the disparity between the wealthy and socio-economically challenged members of society while working as a Special Projects Coordinator for Consolidated Agencies of Human Service in Hawthorne, Nevada
.
After September 11, 2001, Simpson, a "self-described 'artivist'," retreated from traditional theatre and began creating biographical works, political in nature, based on the lives of historical women.
For the 10th Anniversary of 9/11, Simpson created an audio of her play about Jeannette Rankin. The video is titled Flight of the Dove, and is accompanied by visual art by Gene Hall and music by Vicki Brown. The video is based on the book with the same title, presented by Code Pink
on their website, and can also be seen on Simpson's homepage.
Her political commentaries can be found on Common Dreams.
. Simpson is the mother of Domenic Francis Stockton, Donald Paul Stockton and Emily Maria Harbaugh. She is the grandmother of Casey Joel Stockton.
and is theatre project specialist for the award-winning feminist publishing company, Kore Press.
Peace activist
This list of peace activists includes people who proactively advocate diplomatic, non-military resolution of political disputes, usually through nonviolent means.A peace activist is an activist of the peace movement.*Jane Addams*Martti Ahtisaari...
and theatre/film artist.
Early life
Simpson was born in RayRay, Arizona
Ray is a ghost town in Pinal County, Arizona, United States. There is a huge copper mine there. The town of Kearny was founded by the Kennecott Mining Company in 1958 as a planned community to accommodate the populations of Ray, Barcelona and Sonora, which were about to be enveloped by Kennecott's...
, Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
. Her parents are Maria Luisa Jugo, a Venezuela
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
n immigrant, and Donald Leroy Simpson, an American mining engineer. Jeanmarie Simpson was raised in rural
Rural
Rural areas or the country or countryside are areas that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described, country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture...
Arizona
Arizona
Arizona ; is a state located in the southwestern region of the United States. It is also part of the western United States and the mountain west. The capital and largest city is Phoenix...
. Her family's move to Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
in 1970 led to her theatre training.
Career
She was founding artistic director of the Nevada Shakespeare CompanyNevada Shakespeare Company
The Nevada Shakespeare Company is an activist theatre based in Reno, Nevada, near Nevada's border with California. It defines its mission to be to "meeting the needs of our uniquely challenging and diverse community...
, 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
Vern Thiessen
Vern Thiessen is a Canadian playwright.Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Thiessen studied at the University of Winnipeg and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts. He later attended the University of Alberta, where he obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree.Thiessen currently lives in Edmonton, Alberta and was...
. The production was presented by Theatre 40 in Beverly Hills, California
Beverly Hills, California
Beverly Hills is an affluent city located in Los Angeles County, California, United States. With a population of 34,109 at the 2010 census, up from 33,784 as of the 2000 census, it is home to numerous Hollywood celebrities. Beverly Hills and the neighboring city of West Hollywood are together...
, and was produced by Leonard Nimoy
Leonard Nimoy
Leonard Simon Nimoy is an American actor, film director, poet, musician and photographer. Nimoy's most famous role is that of Spock in the original Star Trek series , multiple films, television and video game sequels....
.
She starred in the film version
A Single Woman (film)
A Single Woman is a 2009 film made by Nevada Shakespeare Company and Heroica Films. It was directed by Kamala Lopez and produced by Cameron Crain, Richard Shelgren and Kamala Lopez. The screenplay was by Jeanmarie Simpson based on her play with the same title.-Artists:The film stars Jeanmarie...
of her play, A Single Woman
A Single Woman (play)
First drafted as a one-woman show by Nevada Shakespeare Company founding Artistic Director, Jeanmarie Simpson, A Single Woman, based on the life of first female Congressmember Jeannette Rankin, developed into a "duet performance work" by the time it premiered at the Oats Park Art Center in Fallon,...
, based on the life of first US Congresswoman and lifelong pacifist, Jeannette Rankin
Jeannette Rankin
Jeannette Pickering Rankin was the first woman in the US Congress. A Republican, she was elected statewide in Montana in 1916 and again in 1940. A lifelong pacifist, she voted against the entry of the United States into both World War I in 1917 and World War II in 1941, the only member of Congress...
. The film was produced by Heroica Films and directed by Kamala Lopez
Kamala Lopez
Kamala Lopez is an actress, director, and political activist. Lopez has appeared in movies including I Heart Huckabees and Born in East L.A., and in television shows such as Lie To Me, Alias, and others.-Acting:...
, a cousin of Simpson's. Though the project includes the voices of many celebrities, including Martin Sheen
Martin Sheen
Ramón Gerardo Antonio Estévez , better known by his stage name Martin Sheen, is an American film actor best known for his performances in the films Badlands and Apocalypse Now , and in the television series The West Wing from 1999 to 2006.He is considered one of the best actors never to be...
, Peter Coyote
Peter Coyote
Peter Coyote is an American actor, author, director, screenwriter and narrator of films, theatre, television and audio books. His voice work includes narrating the opening ceremony of the 2002 Winter Olympics and Apple's iPad campaign. He has also served as on-camera co-host of the 2000 Oscar...
, Judd Nelson
Judd Nelson
Judd Asher Nelson is an American actor. He is best known for being a member of the "Brat Pack" in the mid-1980s; and for his roles as John Bender in The Breakfast Club, Alec Newbary in St...
and Patricia Arquette
Patricia Arquette
Patricia T. Arquette is an American actress and director. She played the lead character in the supernatural drama series Medium for which she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series....
and includes in its soundtrack the iconic Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell, CC is a Canadian musician, singer songwriter, and painter. Mitchell began singing in small nightclubs in her native Saskatchewan and Western Canada and then busking in the streets and dives of Toronto...
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 result, and in October of 2011 she is quoted in the Huffington Post saying of the film, "That's probably the biggest disappointment of my life."
In September of 2009, Simpson opened in Tucson, Arizona
Tucson, Arizona
Tucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...
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.
As of February 2011, Simpson toured with readings of Mary's Joy - the anatomy of a martyr, her play based on the life of Mary Dyer
Mary Dyer
Mary Baker Dyer was an English Puritan turned Quaker who was hanged in Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony , for repeatedly defying a Puritan law banning Quakers from the colony...
, the first colonial woman to be executed in the New World. Dyer was hanged June 1, 1660, for being a Quaker and refusing to stay out of Boston, Massachusetts.
Activism
Jeanmarie Simpson is a Lifetime Member of the Women's International League for Peace and FreedomWomen's International League for Peace and Freedom
The Women's International League for Peace and Freedom was established in the United States in January 1915 as the Woman's Peace Party...
(WILPF), sitting on the National Board of the US Section as of June, 2006. She has been a pacifist and human rights/peace activist since 1984, when she observed the disparity between the wealthy and socio-economically challenged members of society while working as a Special Projects Coordinator for Consolidated Agencies of Human Service in Hawthorne, Nevada
Hawthorne, Nevada
Hawthorne is a census-designated place in Mineral County, Nevada, United States. The population was 3,311 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Mineral County...
.
After September 11, 2001, Simpson, a "self-described 'artivist'," retreated from traditional theatre and began creating biographical works, political in nature, based on the lives of historical women.
For the 10th Anniversary of 9/11, Simpson created an audio of her play about Jeannette Rankin. The video is titled Flight of the Dove, and is accompanied by visual art by Gene Hall and music by Vicki Brown. The video is based on the book with the same title, presented by Code Pink
Code Pink
Code Pink: Women for Peace is an anti-war group that is mainly composed of women. It has regional offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, and Washington, D.C., and many more chapters in the U.S. as well as several in other countries...
on their website, and can also be seen on Simpson's homepage.
Her political commentaries can be found on Common Dreams.
Personal Life
Simpson has been legally married three times. She was first married at 16, but that lasted only 5 months and was later annulled. From 1995 through January of 2007, she was in a relationship with Cameron David Crain, a waiter-turned actor who is now a drama teacher. They had a wedding ceremony in 1996, however they were never legally married. She is now married to artist and entomologist, Gene Hall, a contributor to the Tree of Life Web ProjectTree of Life Web Project
The Tree of Life Web Project is an ongoing Internet project providing information about the diversity and phylogeny of life on Earth. This collaborative peer reviewed project began in 1995, and is written by biologists from around the world....
. Simpson is the mother of Domenic Francis Stockton, Donald Paul Stockton and Emily Maria Harbaugh. She is the grandmother of Casey Joel Stockton.
Current activities
She now resides in Tucson, ArizonaTucson, Arizona
Tucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...
and is theatre project specialist for the award-winning feminist publishing company, Kore Press.