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, Ms. Simpson has developed a unique physical training method for the actor called The Lucid Body. Fay wrote The Lucid Body:A Guide for the Physical Actor, published in 2008 by Allworth Press. The LUCID BODY Institute has trained and certified teachers around the world. www.lucidbody.com.
Choreographer/Producer
After dancing professionally for six years, Fay was yearning for more character and story. Stories hold the essence of human life. We yearn for them to help us understand our own story. Dancing felt wonderfully vital, technical and powerful. She wanted the emotional power of heightened movement to become part of the story-telling. She started a slightly obsessive period in her life, creating a multitude of original physical theatre pieces with tenacity and vigor. She started with a madcap piece called Research and Development , originally created with students from the National Shakespeare Conservatory, Greg Wolfe and Joseph Knight, with composition by Andy Scott, which was then co-produced by The Manhattan Class Company. From there, her choreographic career took off.
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When Lauren Cramer working at BAM as a fundraiser, thought her work was good, they formed a company, Impact Theatre. Actually, it was first called Fay Simpson Dance Theatre, but switched to the present day, Impact Theatre NYC. and has been humming along ever since, impacting social change.
Intimacy and Conflict Choreography
Fay studied with IDI (Intimacy Directors International) to help hone her skills as an Intimacy choreographer. Using the Lucid Body tools of somatic awareness and sensitivity with her 30 years of choreography experience, she has created a rehearsal process to help each actor learn how to advocate for themselves and consent to every point of contact. Her goal in guiding the building of intimate choreography is to introduce these listening protocols to the creative process, to safely enhance the actor’s impulses while keeping the storytelling context nuanced and truthful.
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- Demons – Bushwick Starr
- Dracula – Ballet Met
- Hound Dog – Ars Nova
- A Song of Songs – Bushwick Starr
- Blue Leaves by John Guarre -NYU
- Blues for An Alabama Sky by Pearl Cleage – NYU
- QUEENS by Martyna Majok – NYU
- Airline Highway by Lisa D’Amour – NYU
- Seagull directed by Lisa Benevides – NYU
- Yerma, directed by Katherine Wilkenson – NYU
- Cymbeline directed by Sara Holden – NYU
Teacher/Coach
Fay started teaching because frankly, she was raising a child and needed to make money. Being a director/choreographer and performer was not paying the bills. She had been rehearsing, performing and creating work for years, but she had no idea of how to teach. She was certified massage therapist (Swedish Institute of Massage), so she knew a lot about the body and hands on work, chakra energy centers and the astounding results of commitment to gesture. When she battled an autoimmune disease after her child was born, she dove into Buddhism for understanding and relief. She recognized the importance of two things for the health of the body; non-judgmental mind towards self and others, and expressing that which is repressed. Finding it and naming it and sharing it.
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And isn’t that what acting is about? All of these elements mixed together became the Lucid Body. She considers herself a conduit, open to what was already in the world, just rearranged a bit differently to suit the exquisitely particular challenge of the actor, and others interested in self expansion.
Fay is the Head of Movement at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU’s Graduate Acting Program. She also teaches privately at the Lucid Body House on Lexington Ave. 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, where she is a member. Fay teaches master classes internationally, at Lucid Body Room /Berlin, and Lucid Body London, as well as in Paris and Toulouse at The American Theatre Project.
Acting Coach:
Fay coaches privately for stage, TV and film. Notably, Lupita Nyong’o, Annaleigh Ashford, Amanda Warren, and Joseph Siravo.
Fay is a coach for the Heroic Public Speaking program.
She was an artist-in-residence at Stella Adler Studio of Acting for 2014-2015 where she developed her most recent work, SCOTTY.
Movement Director
Fay is a collaborator. Working alongside a director is one of her preferred roles. As movement director she is responsible for the physical truthfulness of the acting, the choreography and transitions of the play, and the shared physical language of the ensemble.
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- Gage County, NE. Movement Director ( HBO Max special, MInd Over Murder)
- Where Should I Put My Clothes Director, Studio Tisch, Play by Jonathan Bock
- Julius Caesar Ensemble workshop creator, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Directed by Shana Cooper
- Peerless Movement Director, Yale Repertory Theatre, Play by Jiehae Park, directed by Margot Bordelon
- Odets: a docu-drama Director, Lucid Body House, Play by Cecilia Rubino
- Speechless Director, Unternehmerinnen center, Berlin, Play by Frederick Johntz
Author
Engage your mind and your body in order to develop your characters fully. The Lucid Body technique breaks up stagnant movement patterns and expands your emotional and physical range. Through energy analysis, this program shows how to use physical training to create characters from all walks of life—however cruel, desolate, or neurotic those characters may be. Rooted in the exploration of the seven chakra energy centers, The Lucid Body reveals how each body holds the possibility of every human condition. Learn how to analyze the character, hear the inner body, dissect the self into layers of consciousness, and more. Buy it on Amazon!
Impact Theatre:
Theater for Social Change
As Artistic Director of Impact Theatre Co-founded in 1990 by Fay Simpson and Lauren Cramer, Fay has devised and directed numerous physical theatre productions; Original Productions: D-Train, Take Me Home, Degas’ Little Dancer, Research & Development, Raging Women and One Bad Man, Kurt’s Wife: A Story of Lotte Lenya, The Marital Bliss of Francis & Maxine, Better, D-Train, Triptych, two solo performance piece entitled Trapped In Seven and Grey Gone, and now, SCOTTY, a piece inspired by Raymond Carver’s short story, A Small Good Thing. She also directed Leaving Theatre, part of the Veterans outreach program, currently being performed at VA centers around the NY area.
Impact Theatre has an on-going Veterans Project dedicated to awakening audience’s to the needs of our homecoming veterans.