Peter Simpson
Adjunct Instructor
Pete Simpson comes to Tisch/Collaborative Arts with nearly 30 years of national and international performance and collaborative theater experience. Rooting his performance work in an eclectic background of physical comedy/lazzi, mime, gymnastics as well as psychological acting approaches (Meisner, Strasberg, etc.), Simpson has evolved his sense of physical play, material generation techniques, performative neutrality, improvisation, character creation, theatrical devising and ensemble collaboration through his experiences as a principal player/collaborator with some of New York’s most foundational and lauded experimental theater artists: Elevator Repair Service, Wooster Group, Young Jean Lee, Daniel Fish, Big Dance Theater, Half Straddle, New York City Players/Richard Maxwell, Richard Foreman, Minor Theater/Julia Jarcho, and others. He has also performed ‘actor/mover’ hybrid roles in the dance works of such choreographers as Susan Marshall, Dean Moss, Annie B. Parson and Faye Driscoll. Simpson also continues his 5,000+ performance run as the titular character in Blue Man Group, for whom he has also served as a trainer of new talent since 1998 (and has also contributed as a writer, director and music arranger). For his work with these artists in venues Off-Broadway, Broadway and around the world Simpson was awarded an Obie for Sustained Excellence of Performance in 2017. Pedagogically, Simpson has conducted workshops or served as movement consultant with NYU/ETW, Boston University, Barnard College, Rutgers University and the University of Wyoming and is also currently adjunct professor at Harvard's TDM program (as lecturer in physical theater). Pete continues performing and training for BMG this year and will also be in NYC and London performing in the newest work of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Annie Baker (“Infinite Life,” running at the Atlantic Theater in NYC and the National Theatre in London).