Amy Simon
Bio:
Amy Simon is the founder and creator of SHE’S HISTORY! a play, school program and series of herstorical presentations, bringing to life herstory making women. “Why do we know more about Kim Kardashian than Abigail Adams?
This playwright, producer, actress, published writer and Cultural Herstorian was inspired (and alarmed) by her ten year old daughter’s desire to do her women’s history report on Cher or Janet Jackson. Amy writes and blogs about women’s history, gender, motherhood, and family life, and performs onstage, in story salons, in the classroom, on the radio and podcasts, and online, bringing awareness of and life to our unheralded, unknown and forgotten heroines.
Acting since childhood, and writing and producing theater for most of her adult life, her first play, Cheerios In My Underwear (And Other True Tales Of Motherhood), held the record as the longest-running solo play in Los Angeles. It was broken by SHE’S HISTORY! which debuted in 2010 at The Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, and has been performed in theaters, schools, universities, libraries, museums, historic sites, and for women’s groups, youth groups, fundraisers, conferences, social justice and political organizations, and military bases. Her work in the classroom, as an educational specialist teaching improvisation and theater games inspired her to create SHE’S HISTORY! for Middle and High School.
Amy is a proud member of SAG-AFTRA, The Dramatists Guild, Los Angeles Female Playwrights Initiative (LAFPI), Association of Los Angeles Playwrights (ALAP), and Theatre West, the longest-operating theater company in Los Angeles, where Amy has been developing SHE IS HISTORY!, a full cast, all-female version of the solo play. She has had several staged readings and recently has workshopped and presented several ten and fifteen minutes pieces of the play. Amy has been working for several years on her solo play about the late great New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug. She has been workshopping it virtually during the pandemic. Also during the pandemic, Amy found a way to virtually celebrate Women’s History Month AND the 100th anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment - Women’s Suffrage in 1920. She created “Speechifyin’”, a collection of groundbreaking speeches of extraordinary women, then and now. Excerpts have been recreated and performed by a powerhouse cast of talented actresses. You can watch it on her website.
A guest commentator for American Woman In Fact And Fiction, on Pacifica Radio Archives FromTheVault.org, Amy has been interviewed by KPBS, Premiere Radio, The Woman’s Eye, and CBS Radio. She appears regularly on the Nicole Sandler Show Radioornot.com with her Fabulous Female Facts. She performed as Bella Abzug at The Manhattan Borough President's Office, celebrating the Anniversary of the Herstoric 1977 Houston Women's Conference. Her work has appeared on-line and in publications such as The Huffington Post, LA Parent Magazine, blogher.com, SheWrites.com, Cup Of Comfort For Mothers, The Mom Egg, Mamazine, hollywoodjournal.com and Mamapalooza Magazine. You can read Fabulous Female Facts on her website.
Always interested in hearing and presenting what women have to say, Amy partnered with LA Parent Magazine and Mamapalooza (Moms In The Arts) with a writing contest that attracted local and celebrity moms, and created, and produced Motherhood Unplugged, a mom-written- and-performed stage show featuring stories and original music. It inaugurated and has been featured on Los Angeles’ KPFK Radio’s Pacifica Performance Showcase. Amy was also a guest commentator for American Woman In Fact And Fiction, a three part series that aired on Pacifica Radio Archives FromTheVault.org series.
Working as a consultant on the 2008 launch of the Broad Stage Theater in Santa Monica, Amy performed a variety of duties, including understudying and stage-managing the thirteen-member cast of American Voices: Spirit of the Revolution, an original play based on “The Federalist Papers” directed by and starring Dustin Hoffman, whom she assisted. Amy plays California Pioneer Maude Younger in California Women Win The Vote, the documentary film produced by Wild West Women, Incorporated.
A native New Yorker, Amy was a founding member of The Intrepid Theatre Company (Go Boldly Forth!) where she got her producing chops working on productions such as Beowulf. At The Intrepid, she worked on publicity, took tickets and played Grendel’s (the monster’s) mother. After ten years performing plays and sketch and improv comedy in New York theaters and comedy clubs, including the famed Palace Theater, The Duplex, Folk City and Manhattan Punch Line, Amy moved west. She found herself writing, directing, co-producing, and performing in Los Angeles with the all female GAL-O-RAMA and OVARYACTION at The Improv, The Laugh Factory, and The Upfront Comedy Theatre. And she was the creative force and co-producer behind Heroine Addicts, the four-year, all-female, hit variety show at Hollywood’s Bang Studio, featuring many of Los Angeles’ finest writer/performers.
An empty nester, Amy is divorced mother of two daughters who can tell you all about the first woman to run for president.
In Rural Tamil Nadu, Child Marriage Was Already Rampant. Then Came the Pandemic.
