Jeanmarie Simpson Playwright · Actor · Director Licensing

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Second edition, Upstage Left Press, 2026

When Churchyards Yawn

Four plays about memory, ritual, collapse, and survival.

When Churchyards Yawn and Other Plays, second edition

Playwright, actor, director, educator

Jeanmarie Simpson

Forty years of work centring women who challenge systems of power, political, religious and cultural.

Jeanmarie Simpson

Thirteen plays, solo to ensemble

A repertoire built to be staged

Language driven drama with historical depth, flexible staging, and strong classroom use.

Jeanmarie Simpson as Mary Dyer, photograph by Dan Bishop

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A living digital home for plays, productions, teaching resources, excerpts, and performance rights.
Jeanmarie Simpson, theatre artist and playwright
Jeanmarie Simpson
The artist

Theatre artist, storyteller, activist

Jeanmarie Simpson is an American theatre artist whose life’s work centres women who challenge systems of power. She is a playwright, actor, director, and educator whose solo and ensemble works explore memory, resistance, and grief.

53

Countries toured with A Single Woman

13

Plays available to licence

30+

Years training actors

Which play fits your programme?

Four questions, three suggestions

Tell the finder what you have available: the size of your company, the slot in your season or term, and the kind of room you are working in. It reads all thirteen plays and returns the three that fit best, with the reason for each.

Nothing is stored on a server. Your answers stay in your browser.

How many performers can you cast?

How long is the slot?

What is it for?

What should it be about?

Three plays for you

Request these plays

When Churchyards Yawn
and Other Plays

Featured collection
When Churchyards Yawn and Other Plays, second edition
Second edition, 2026

Four plays in which the past is not past, the dead are not silent, and familiar stories open to reveal the lives concealed inside them.

A collection for educators, actors, directors, universities, and community theatres seeking language-driven contemporary drama with historical depth, flexible staging, and strong classroom use.

The collection includes plays intended for classroom discussion, staged readings, actor training, independent production, and repertory development.

When Churchyards Yawn Lear: A Solo Adaptation Ghosts of the Gilded Stage Even Unto Death

For Educators and Theatre Programs

Resources

Educational resources are available for high schools, colleges, universities, acting programs, and community theatre organizations.

  • Classroom scene packets
  • Monologues for actor training
  • Teaching and discussion guides
  • Performance excerpts
  • Review copies
  • Workshop and guest discussion availability
  • Production and staging information
Reno Sweeney, Anything Goes, 1993
Teaching and residency work

Themes throughout the work include memory, political history, ritual, survival, gender, mythology, Shakespearean inheritance, and contemporary performance.

Performance rights

Stage it

Rights are available for universities, schools, community theatres, festivals, workshops, staged readings, and independent productions.

What the press said

Reviews and profiles
Jeanmarie Simpson does not just expose the experience of life in the military, she humanizes it. Huffington Post
Coming in Hot is a tour de force. If you haven’t seen it, seek it out. Tucson Weekly
It may be the best one I’ve seen in Nevada thus far. Reno News and Review, on Richard III

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New plays, new productions, twice a year

A short letter when a play is finished, when a production opens, or when new classroom material becomes available. Nothing else.

New plays and new productions, twice a year. Nothing else.

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