Hannah Simms

is a director, teacher, and playwright based in Hartford, CT.

She is a graduate of the Dell’Arte School of Physical Theatre and the NationaI Theatre Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center; and the Ada Comstock Scholar program at Smith College.

In 2005 she moved to Hartford, and began to fall in love with what is secretly The Greatest City In the World.  That very weekend, in a series of events involving a scavenger hunt, she met HartBeat Ensemble. HartBeat has been  her artistic home ever since.

With HartBeat, she has directed Pegao, Frog Hollow State of Mind, and Asylum Hill: Meet Us Where We Are, as well as countless readings and workshops. Other directing credits include  To Kill A Mockingbird (Central CT State University), Guenevere, To Fall In Love, and The Robertassey (Ivoryton Playhouse Women Playwright’s Initiative), Eurydice and Dearly Departed, (PVPA Charter School),  Twelfth Night (Hampshire Shakespeare), Playhouse on Park’s Playwrights series, Hartford Stage’s Write On festival, and seven Shakespeare productions with the geniuses at Hampshire Shakespeare Young Company.   She teaches theater at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts.

Hannah has assisted for Leta Tremblay on The City That Cried Wolf at 59E59 and for Rachel Alderman on HartBeat’s Gross Domestic Product. 

She speaks Spanish and French, and has also been a burlesque emcee, a stilt walker, and a goat farmer.  She is parent to one hilarious small child.