Jeanmarie Simpson

Jeanmarie Simpson 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) at the Bayview Playhouse. 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, from which she retired in 2008. She wrote and performed 263 times 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 and directed by his wife, Susan. Jeanmarie is a practicing Quaker and life 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 would make a terrific 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. Jeanmarie is the mother of Domenic and Paul Stockton and Emily Harbaugh. She is the grandmother of Casey Joel Stockton. Her son, Paul, in the Navy since July of 2000, was deployed to Iraq in 2003 and returned to the States in 2004. He was re-deployed to Afghanistan as part of a Naval Construction Battalion in July, 2010. In 2014, she began touring with her solo-performance, Mary's Joy. She was denied entry at England's Heathrowe airport on Friday the 13th of February 2015. She then announced that the play would be filmed and distributed worldwide.