Fay Simpson

fay bio pic

Fay Simpson has been the Artistic Director and co-founder of Impact Theatre since its creation in 1990. Informed by her work in the rehearsal room, the teaching studio and onstage over the last 20 years, Fay has developed a unique physical training method for the actor called The Lucid Body. She taught at The Yale School of Drama, the New School’s Eugene Lang, Michael Howard Studios, The Studio/NY, Marymount Manhattan College, and at the Actor’s Center. She currently teaches this technique at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU’s Graduate Acting Program, and privately at the Lucid Body House. Fay wrote The Lucid Body: A Guide for the Physical Actor, published in 2008 by Allworth Press. She has a two-year Lucid Body Teacher Training program now in place.

Theater for Social Change
In the summer of 2011, Fay developed and taught a graduate course with Yale Drama and Divinity graduate students in Tanzania called Catalysts for Social Change, with Gamal Palmer. Along with Mgunga Mwa Myyenyelwa, from Parapanda Arts Lab, she co-directed street pieces in marginalized communities to engender community dialogue. She learned the Behavior Change Process from Mgunga, which she is now employing in her Veterans Project: Homecoming, which she brings to VA centers around NY to stimulate dialogue and change.

Fellowships/Awards

• 2013, received a Fellowship from the Likhachev Foundation in St. Petersburg, Russia, where she studied the Master teachers at the St. Petersburg Academy, followed by a teaching tour in Moscow, Berlin, London and Paris.

• 2008, recipient of the ‘Amy and Eric Berger National Theatre Essay Award’ for development of her book, The Lucid Body: A Guide for the Physical Actor. This book was hailed by Drama Book Shop as “one of the ten most essential books for the actor.”

• 2000, honored with “Best Female Performer” in the Spotlight On awards for solo performance piece entitled Trapped In Seven.

• 1999, awarded a Fox Foundation Fellowship and served as an Assistant at the New Globe Theatre in London under the artistic directorship of Mark Rylance for the 1999 – 2000 season.

• 1996, awarded a Tennessee Williams Fellowship from The University of the South, Sewanee.

 

Coaching

Visit https://lucidbody.com/testimonials/ to read testimonials about Fay’s coaching from Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o and other former and current students.

 

Theater Companies that have utilized the Lucid Body in the US:

Terra Firma (Cries and Whispers), Scandinavian American Theatre Company (Miss Julie), Karin Coonrad (Everything that Rises Must Converge)

Internationally:
In Toulouse with Innocentia Inviolata (Of Kings and Men)
In London with Gabrielle Moleta (The Outsiders)
In Dar es Salaam Parapanda Arts Lab in Tanzania.

 

Impact Theatre
Fay conceived, directed and produced several original physical theatre productions at Manhattan Class Company: D-Train, Take Me Home, Degas’ Little Dancer, and Research & Development. Other Off-Broadway and international productions include Raging Women and One Bad Man, Kurt’s Wife: A Story of Lotte Lenya, The Marital Bliss of Francis & Maxine, Better, Triptych, SCOTTY, and two solo performance pieces entitled Trapped In Seven, and Grey Gone.

Fay received her B.F.A. in Theatre & Dance from Colorado College and her M.A. from NYU’s Gallatin School. She is a member of the Actors Center.


Teaching Schedule

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