I believe that good art comes from good rooms.

I create healthy, rigorous, collaborative and playful rehearsal rooms.

I am obsessed with making work that is visceral- that gets you in the gut and changes the air in the room.

I am committed to rebellious new stories and to rebellious reframing of old stories.

Creating a play should feel like falling in love.

Upcoming

January-June 2022

Studying at Universidad del Sagrado Corazón in San Juan, Puerto Rico

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 is a current Ada Comstock Scholar 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.

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. Please do not get her started on the topic of goats.