By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
When Genevieve Simon was a junior at Bowling Green High School she didn’t get the part she wanted in the school musical “West Side Story.”
Instead of a role with a lot of singing and dancing, the director Jo Beth Gonzalez cast Simon as Anybodys, a tom boy who hangs out with the Jets, who ignore her. But she persists. “She was this strange girl who wanted to be a boy.”
Simon ended up loving the role even though it has few lines. That didn’t mean it she wasn’t acting. “I started to learn how to be on stage when it’s not about you.”
Genevieve Simon
Simon learned to listen intently to the story. She fashioned a deep inner life for Anybodys, contemplating her role in the social structure, and projecting that even if she was in the shadows.
“I was able to explore and learn how to be on stage and listen, how to be part of a group – who do I feel most loyal to, most scared of, and who do I hate?”
“I look back at that and am so grateful she gave me that challenge,” Simon said in a recent telephone interview from her home in New York City.
That experience not only has played into her development as a professional actor now working in New York, but it has inspired a new play, “Romeo + Juliet + Anybodys,” that will be performed at the Cincinnati Fringe Festival June 6, 8, and 10. For details visit: http://www.cincyfringe.com. The play brings Anybodys out of the shadows and into the spotlight.
Simon said the idea for the play came to her about a year ago while riding the subway. She was reading a book in which a female character was simply called No Name. This frustrated Simon. Why would the author not give her a name? Then the train stopped, and it made a familiar metallic noise, which happens to mimic the first three notes of the song “Somewhere” from “West Side Story.” That got Simon thinking about this other female character with no name whom she’d played.
For fun, she started writing in Anybodys’ voice, exploring her view of the tragedy. Simon discovered that “she had a lot to say.”
Anybodys is there at pivotal moments. “But nobody listens.”
Simon also looked at Shakespeare’s “Rome and Juliet.”
There’s no character like Anybodys in Shakespeare’s tragedy, Balthasar, Romeo’s servant seems closest to fit the role.
But Anybodys’ outcast status also got Simon thinking about others that people chose to ignore. While she has found New York a friendly place with people always willing to help, New Yorkers also have a way of shutting down emotionally, ignoring those around them who are speaking too loudly or strangely or are too dirty.
Simon wondered: “How can we use theater to give those people a place to be seen or heard? Why are there people out in the world who we refuse to acknowledge?”
The script “kept evolving the more I kept writing,” she said. The story is so familiar – two star-crossed lovers who die for their love, she said, “yet I could unpack it in an entirely new way.”
She shared her nascent script with director Claire Edmonds who was impressed. Then with the help of friends she got some actors together for pizza and a read through. Edmonds said she’d be interested in directing the play and last December they staged a “bare bones” production at the Manhattan Repertory Theater.
In looking for other venues, friends suggested the Cincinnati Fringe Festival. The festival, true to the philosophy of the original, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, is a mix of original cutting edge performances, including dance, drama, puppets, music, and comedy.
Simon wanted music so she asked friends in an indie rock band to compose a score. She penned some of the lyrics. That meant she had to recruit a cast who could act, sing and play instruments.
It took until April to get the script settled. While the work is based on Simon’s script, she wants her collaborators to have their say. “The best thing in the world is to make things with your friends.”
That’s a philosophy that dates back to her theatrical roots in Bowling Green. Her parents, Marc and Maria Simon, enrolled her in the array of activities available for youngsters in Bowling Green, music, swimming, and a plethora of Parks and Rec classes. What she liked best were the plays and drama club offered by the Horizon Youth Theatre.
She credits the troupe’s founder Scott Regan and Gonzalez, who was involved with HYT, with empowering the young actors. “It was so important to us having authority and some sort of control over the stories we were telling,” Simon said. “Scott was so good about taking our ideas very seriously.”
That approach continued with Gonzalez in high school.
Simon’s first role in a production with HYT was as Gladys Herdman in “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.”
Gladys was a cigar smoking hellion, not at all like Simon. But she loved portraying someone so unlike herself, though sometimes her mother had to remind her not to bring Gladys home.
When it came time to go to college, Simon headed to Ohio State where she majored in psychology. She also got involved with InterACT, a social issues theater troupe. They staged a production about the problems faced by veterans returning to school. They interviewed veterans about their stories and then dramatized them. One of the audiences was a group of administrators, who asked a lot of questions and were spurred to action by what they saw.
About this time, a professor spoke with Simon and told her that she knew Simon was interested in social issues and politics and said she could pursue that through theater, and people would pay her for it.
So Simon switched her major. She also worked part time with the Columbus Children’s Theatre. It was a way of repaying her own youth theater mentors
Simon employed similar games. Once with a group of kindergartners performing for their parents, one youngster said they should pretend to be adults. Their impressions were telling; one immediately acted like she was texting. “It was a wakeup call.”
On graduating in 2014, Simon moved to Los Angeles with her boyfriend. Though at first they expected to stay, New York was calling them. When he finished his graduate degree they headed east in October, 2015.
“If we were going to do it, now was the time,” she said. “I was always scared of living in New York. It seemed very intimidating. I was having all these doubts.” Still they went. “Every day is definitely an adventure.”
She’s involved in many projects. Among those is leading workshops for kids on the autism spectrum using Shakespeare. The therapy, developed by a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, uses drama games and play.
Simon started training in the system when she was in college. “It’s a nice overlap between arts and neuroscience. It was studied at OSU while I was in college to see if there was tangible effect. They found it did.”
Simon now hosts workshops in New York. “I like that I can use my training as an actor and have an impact on people’s lives and empower kids to express themselves.”
