Jim Simpson: Theater That Makes a Difference

About the author:
Jim Simpson is well known in theatrical circles as an accomplished director of more than 70 productions throughout the country, including the original mounting and recent revival of Nixon's Nixon. But Simpson's larger contribution to New York' City's cultural landscape can be seen in his work as founder and artistic director of The Flea Theater. Thanks to his vision, this little downtown house has earned a name for presenting adventurous, politically charged plays, including its current offering, A.R. Gurney's Post Mortem. A two-time Obie winner, Simpson has been cited for artistic leadership in Downtown New York by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council for his vigorous response to 9/11 in reopening the Flea with The Guys more about that in his essay below. His personal background is as eclectic as his taste: He was a child actor in his hometown of Honolulu, worked with Jerzy Grotowski in Poland as a teenager and holds degrees from Keio University in Tokyo, Boston University School for the Arts and Yale Drama School. Oh, and he's been married for more than 20 years to one of his favorite leading ladies, Sigourney Weaver. As Americans go to the polls to make choices that will affect the country's future, Broadway.com asked Simpson to share his views on the value of political theater.

Post Mortem is the third play that A.R. Pete Gurney has written for The Flea Theater. This happy collaboration began in 2002 when he sent me his play O Jerusalem. O Jerusalem was a departure from what I knew of Mr. Gurney's work. It was very topical and expressed a strong political point of view, but it still exhibited the unique elegance and swift rhythm typical of Pete's plays. Two of the play's central questions are what to do about the Palestinian nation, particularly its youth, and what America's responsibility in all of this is. Although we encountered some benign threats and accusations of "humanizing terrorists," we took on this ambitious play with relish.

A.R. Gurney then continued his forays into current events by presenting to us in succession: Mrs. Farnsworth, Screen Play and now Post Mortem. The three plays were tailored to the Flea aesthetic: little scenery, lots of imagination and solid acting in an intimate setting. And while the issues could not have been more pressing, Pete managed to make it a great deal of fun to consider them. Audiences found them entrancing. Mrs. Farnsworth played for months, as did Screen Play. The current play, Post Mortem, takes on the very idea of an issue-oriented or political play. Imagine a play written by an obscure "dead" playwright, Mr. Gurney, which solves all of the world's problems—from universal healthcare to convenient public transportation to the obnoxious ubiquity of cell phones. In Post Mortem, Gurney takes on all of these and more.

In a way, Post Mortem addresses the question of what issue-oriented theater can and should be. I won't give A.R. Gurney's answer away, but I would like to say this about the Flea and our interest in presenting topical, thought-provoking work: Our little theater took a real turn after 9/11. On that Tuesday we were hosting a number of plays in repertory as well as two dance companies and a concert series. Because of our location below Canal Street, we were totally shut down. A member of our resident company of young actors insisted that we respond to the attack with what we do. I found that a bit challenging. Luckily I met Anne Nelson, a journalism professor up at Columbia University who was able to turn her experiences immediately after the attack into a play, The Guys. The story of a fire captain struggling with the loss of eight of his men on 9/11 and the writer who helps him write eulogies couldn't have been more topical or timely. At the time, I felt it put a human face on what was an enormous, horrific event. That's one of the things the theater can do.

I'd grown up as a musical theater kid in Honolulu, not dreaming of Broadway but rather of off- and off-off Broadway. Working alongside John Raitt in Carousel, I was dreaming about seeing the work of Joe Chaikin and Allan Kaprow and doing relevant political theater that could make a difference. Now, 40 years later, I'm not dreaming. You can't escape the question of relevance these days. It's what fired us up to do the recent revival of Nixon's Nixon at MCC. After doing a reading, we discovered that the play had a newly minted resonance in today's political climate, and we immediately made plans to get it on.

I scour the Internet for new plays that might illuminate the complex issues we face today. Two recent productions—Glynn O'Malley's Heartbeat to Baghdad and Yusef El Guindi's Back of the Throat—were found this way and produced at The Flea. Our next production, Mac Wellman's Two September, may be about Ho Chi Minh, but it couldn't be timelier.

Ultimately, I'm a sucker for good writing. Even if a piece is incredibly relevant, if it's announced loudly without sophistication, I'm not too interested. Good playwrighting nearly always extends way beyond presenting an editorial point of view.