LEVY LEE

A multi-award-winning writer, actor, and director, Levy Lee Simon is originally from Harlem USA, and received his MFA from the Iowa Playwrights Workshop at the University of Iowa. His award-winning plays include: For the Love of Freedom—The Trilogy (Robey Theatre Company and Greenway Arts Alliance; two NAACP Nominations for Best Playwright; Ovation Nomination: Best Full Length Play); The Bow Wow Club (Lorraine Hansberry/Kennedy Center Award: Best Full Length Play; National Black Theatre Festival selection); Same Train (Algonquin Productions; OOBR Award: Best Play; NBTF selection); Smell the Power (New Voices Playwriting Award: Best Play); and The Guest at Central Park West (Workshop Theatre and the H.A.D.L.E.Y. Players; Audelco Awards: Best Playwright and Dramatic Production of the Year). 

Simon was recently given the Playwright of the Year award by the San Diego Writers Festival honoring his body of work and his two productions in 2022.

Other productions include: The Stuttering Preacher; Caseload; God the Crackhouse and the Devil; The Last Revolutionary; The Magnificent Dunbar Hotel (Robey Theatre Company); Heated Discussion Revisited (Robey Theatre Company commission and premiere); and Fractured (Actors Studio Playwright/Director’s Unit; workshopped by the New Circle Theatre Company). Optioned screenplays include: The Guest (MoJo Films); The Bow Wow Club (FOX Searchlight); Dad (Forty Acres and a Mule); and God the Crackhouse and the Devil (Crackhouse, LLC). His feature film, The Last Revolutionary, premiered at the Pan-African Film Festival in 2017, and can now be seen on Amazon Prime. He has been involved in developing several TV shows, including “Central Avenue,” set in L.A. during the jazz era of the 1930s and ’40s. 

As an actor, Simon has performed on Broadway, Off-Broadway, at regional theaters, and in the Caribbean. He has been seen in the Pulitzer Prize-winning and Tony-nominated production of The Kentucky Cycle and in Miss Evers’ Boys (Barbican and Bristol Old Vic). In 2020, he wrote and performed his first solo show, Odyssey—Race and Racism, which was live-streamed to national and international audiences. Recently, he performed in the Denver Center’s world premiere of In the Upper Room by Beaufield Berry, earning him a Colorado Theatre Guild Best Supporting Actor nomination.

His directing credits include: With a Little Help–It’s John Belushi by Jack Zullo (Theatre 80; Broadway World nomination: Best Off-Broadway Play); The Bow Wow Club (Marietta Theatre, Atlanta); and Amiri Baraka’s Dutchman.