John Simpkins: Directing, Teaching and Guiding

Intricate and challenging musicals like Floyd Collins, Parade and Violet may not be standard fare for performers not yet old enough to drink (legally, anyway), but at New York University's Steinhardt School's Department of Music and Performing Arts Professions, students under John Simpkins direction have done all of these shows and more. Next weekend, the program will present Kander & Ebb's dark musical Kiss of the Spider Woman, again directed by Simpkins.

"I like to look for something that explores a part of our human condition that we don't typically get a chance to think about or talk about," Simpkins says about his directorial choices. "Men who live a more comfortable life 100 feet under the ground in a dark wet cave and feel happier there than they do in their family life; high school kids who are living what appears to be an outwardly suburban environment, but underneath that they're kind of dying from the weight of suburban expectations; unwilling people who are forced to be friends...In Spider Woman, how to deal with a man who's not a man, [but] a woman...the list goes on. I guess the easiest way to say it would be that I like to think about things that are tough to think about, that are deep in our human psyche, and hurt to think about. And I think theatre, this sort of theatre, lets you explore it artistically, which sort of impacts—definitely our lives, and hopefully the lives of the folks who watch it as well."

In his dual role as teacher and director, Simpkins believes that giving college students such difficult shows to perform helps them develop as both singers and actors. "They're learning how to prepare roles," he says, "and the more difficult or complicated or mature the show themes, I think they're forced to think and participate in the process themselves, which I think makes their experience better as an artist." Still, he acknowledges that there are difficulties in selecting shows like these. "They really hurt your brain," he laughs. "They really tax everyone's preparation and skills—and, for students, you often have them just as they're learning a process, so these complicated, mature shows sometimes require someone who's further along in their process. But what they lack in that kind of experience, they Make Up For in willingness and enthusiasm, so I think at the end of the day that's a positive anyway."

"One of the exciting things that I love about this program that NYU does is that they're a voice-based degree, so the students all sing incredibly well," he continues, adding that shows like Floyd Collins or Violet or Kiss of the Spider Woman require "a sophistication of musical style" of their performers. "The students already come with that sensibility, so it becomes wonderful to build on that, rather than teach that, which I think other programs might have a little trouble with," he says.

Each show presents its unique challenges, of course, and Simpkins has enjoyed unraveling the knots in his current production. "A show like Spider Woman has so many layers of complexity to it," he says happily. "You're dealing with what's in reality and what's in Molina's head, [and] if you're in Molina's head, how do you function as an actor, as a young person, as a dancer, as a singer." The actors, he says, "brought with them their research and their enthusiasm for trying to get to the bottom of that, which is what they learn in their coursework here." The actors' willingness to learn is especially exciting, Simpkins says. "Sometimes with older actors [or] more-credentialed actors, there's a sense of 'Oh, I know how to do that,' and with young people, because they don't yet know how to do that, they research it and they really dig in and roll up their sleeves and get to the bottom of it."

The show, he continues, has many "rungs of reality" that affect how the show can be staged--"For instance, the production numbers where Aurora's out front in Molina's brain, [we]  make decisions like, is she speaking Molina's words or is she speaking her own words that he saw that he's now turning around and wrapping up into something else, or is she fully a functioning person that he's just borrowing? And how do you get actors to all be in the same world as you begin to make those decisions in how numbers develop. I mean, those are the kind of conversations that we're having and the kind of things we're forced to articulate to ourselves, which has been really complicated and exciting. As you get started, it almost blows your mind all the decisions you have to have about it before you understand it."

To get every aspect of the show, Simpkins says that he, the cast and the team "talk a lot," and adds that the six-week rehearsal time gives them a longer opportunity to find new layers to the show. "We don't have two weeks to put it up somewhere out-of-town, so we're afforded the luxury of screwing up a whole bunch," he laughs. "We can really mess up and we can go back and say, 'Well, that was perhaps the right idea, and really the wrong execution,' and we can stop and talk about it, and, again, because they're in their process academically, it becomes very easy to have those conversations as part of rehearsal and treat them as research, sort of character-based stuff. Sometimes you can do that with professionals, sometimes they won't let you."

One artist who Simpkins mentored was Joe Iconis, who has gone on to win the Jonathan Larson award, the Ed Kleban award and a Bistro award. "Joe was a student in the Music Composition program at NYU as I was joining the faculty," Simpkins remembers. "I'd always heard of Joe, not only from the Composition program, but also he'd played piano for some of the students in the program that I taught. I met him one day, and I asked him if he'd be interested in working together on a production of Godspell that I was directing, and he musical-directed that. So it took all of about 10 minutes to realize that we had sensibilities, about music or theater or humans or the work process."

Those shared sensibilities gave birth to a lasting relationship, and Simpkins has directed several of Iconis' projects since then. "As all good collaborations do, you kind of look for it for years and years and then you find it in about five seconds," he says. "I guess I've watched him--'refine' might be the best word—refine his voice, his stylistic voice more and more."

"I think writers, especially young ones, are sometimes pulled in so many different directions in terms of the people that have the ability to influence the writing of a piece, be that a development director, an artistic director, [or] an agent," he continues. "And Joe, I think, has always had a very unique voice as a writer, and it's been exciting to watch him figure out, through his projects, exactly what the stories are he wants to tell. He writes about normal human stuff. He writes about friendship and suburbia. He writes for characters that don't usually get to be in musicals, if that makes any sense, and I think he writes about them in a contemporary natural way of speaking. And then when that collides with his part-rock-and-roll, part musical theatre affection, as a musician-It's really neat to watch him bring that all together and figure out how that form of storytelling, that style of storytelling can serve what he's wanting to say. And watching him figure out how people speak and sing within that construct has been really fascinating."

Simpkins demurs when asked what influence he feels he has had on Iconis' growth, and success. "The more I work with him, the more I can figure out the right questions to ask him that might continue to stretch us both as we collaborate," he says. "With every new project, I think you have a confidence in collaboration, and a knowledge about the work, so...I come in a little earlier these days to some of the things he writes, and I feel like I'm better prepared to ask him the right dramaturgical questions as he's structuring the piece, because we've got some longevity of collaboration. I just kind of get him: I feel like I know how his characters talk and I can fairly easily and quickly articulate what they want and how I can translate that into my work as a director. Every time a director and writer have that in common, it's very easy-" he stops and corrects himself. "Not easy, but it's very fulfilling to walk into the room together with actors...He's just my favorite person to work with."

As both a teacher and director, Simpkins can watch the next generation of musical theater artists and fans grow and develop. "I think it's going to continue to get very different from what we all would consider to be traditional means of storytelling in musicals," he says of the artform's future. "I think hybrid pieces are going to continue to peek their head up as everybody has to continue to get creative in terms of how to compete for audiences and produce shows that don't cost millions and millions of dollars."

"There are so many young writers that I have the privilege of working with or observing, that I can't wait to see how they impact our future," he continues. "I think they will always do what writers of musicals always have, in terms of leading the way culturally, socially, and politically; but I think the method of storytelling has been so blown wide open that it's just ready to explode into so many different ways of telling stories...I don't know that anybody can predict anything," he acknowledges, "but I do know that the experimentation in the form leaves me very excited about these young writers and their ability to be given a chance for their voices to be heard, and I think that's going to change, just in the way that we tell stories."

To get that change to happen, Simpkins believes that the most important quality people in the industry need to develop is courage. "Courage in people who are producing musicals, courage in people who are developing musicals, to suss out talent, rather than just pick what they believe is a safe choice, based on either somebody's resume, or if it happens to be based on a film or whatever the case may be—I think it always comes down to courage from the top."

Kiss of the Spider Woman runs October 1, 2, 3 & 5 at 8 pm and October 4 at 3 pm at the Frederick Loewe Theatre at 35 West 4^th Street. At 6:30 p.m. on Monday, October 5, Composer John Kander and Bookwriter Terrence McNally will be participating in a pre-show discussion about the creation and history of their musical. For more information and to make ticket reservations, call (212) 998-5281 or email steinhardt.boxoffice@nyu.edu

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