Jim Simpson is the artistic director and founder of the Flea Theater, which was established in lower Manhattan in 1996. The Flea has to date presented 40 plays and over 90 music and dance performances. It also offers workshops and training and rehearsal facilities for young artists from many different performance disciplines.

Notable productions and performers at the Flea have included Chère Maître (starring Irene Worth and Peter Eyre); Obie Award winner Sarah East Johnson's Lava Love; Kathryn Supove's The Exploding Piano; Jaki Bayard; and the Absolute Ensemble.

For the Flea, Simpson has directed the premieres of Kate Robin's The Light Outside; Alice Tujan's Ajax (por nobody); Karen Finley's The Return of the Chocolate-Smeared Woman; Herman Farrell's Bedfellows; and Anne Nelson's The Guys.

With the young resident company, the Bats, he staged the kabuki play Benten Kozo (which earned him an Obie Award for his direction); Bertolt Brecht's Baal; Walter Woods' Billy the Kid; Lillian Mortimer's No Mother to Guide Her; and Flea co-founder Mac Wellman's Cleveland and Cellophane.

Also for the New York stage, Simpson has directed the premieres of Mac Wellman's Sincerity Forever, A Murder of Crows, Three Americanisms, Seven Blowjobs, and Bad Penny (which earned him an Obie Award for his direction); Christopher Walken's Him; Russell Lee's Nixon's Nixon (for Manhattan City Center and Westside Arts); Arthur Kopits' Road to Nirvana (at Circle Rep); as well as Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (for Classic Stage Company).

Regionally, he has staged Harold Pinter's The Homecoming; Tennessee Williams' Summer and Smoke; and Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class, among others. He has directed for eight seasons at the Williamstown Theater Festival; and has also staged projects at Yale Rep, the Actors' Theater of Louisville, and the La Jolla Playhouse, among others. Abroad, he has directed productions in London, Dublin, Edinburgh, and Melbourne.

As actor, Simpson has been seen in television episodes of Hawaii 5-O (as a teenager, on location in his native state) and Homicide: Life on the Street; and John Walsh's Pipe Dream (with Mary-Louise Parker and Martin Donovan).

He was a directing fellow at the Sundance Film Institute, where he helmed portions of 3000, which eventually became the Garry Marshall feature Pretty Woman. He also directed an episode of HBO's Tales from the Crypt. Years earlier, Simpson's short film Six Slippers of Death was the Audience Favorite at the Hawaii Film Festival.

Credit: filmbug.com