After Graduating from Bristol
University, Simon spent three years in stage management
before directing his first productions. He wrote and
directed Double Act at the Leicester Haymarket
Studio and Captain Incredible at the Leicester
Phoenix Arts Centre before going to the Bolton Octagon
as Young People's Director.
Simon wrote and directed
Rock-Me-Amadeus - a play about Mozart which toured
nationally for Compass Theatre; and Now We Are Engaged
for the national Museum of Photography, Film and Television.
He also wrote Fairplay, commissioned by Southport
Arts Centre and broadcast by BBC Radio Four.
Simon joined Hull
Truck Theatre in September 1995, where he directed
Alan Ayckbourn's Relatively Speaking, The
Twelve Days of Christmas by world famous children's
TV author John Cunliffe, John Godber's Hooray For
Hollywood, Mick Martin's A Weekend In England,
David Bown's Stand, Shakespeare's Macbeth
and Alan Bennett's Talking Heads. He also directed
Kissing Sid James by Robert Farquhar which played
at Hull Truck Theatre in February 1999 before embarking
on a nation-wide tour of Great Britain. He wrote and
directed Gold!, an 80's musical, for Hull Truck
Theatre which also toured nationally through Autumn
1999.
In 1999 he became Executive
Director of the
Octagon Theatre in Bolton. Here he directed Misconceptions
by David Lewis which was nominated for Best Production
in the Manchester News Theatre Awards 2001, and 100
years in Worktown, a Year of the Artist funded projected
which produced a piece of theatre from an oral history
project examining working life in Bolton over the last
century.
He
worked for two years in Television, both for the BBC
and on ITV's "Coronation
Street" as the programme's Script Editor.
In
April 2005 Simon joined the Gala
Theatre in Durham as Director. Over the last six
years he has worked with a new team at Gala to make
the venue one of the most successful in the North East.
At Gala Simon directed 14 productions
including 10 World Premieres. Simon was the Creative
Director of Durham
Mysteries 2010 - a major outdoor performance event
for 2010 which is commisioned 10 new plays based on
traditional mystery plays.
He has also recently collaborated with
Rodney Bewes on a new play about Jerome
K. Jerome which toured nationally..
He is a Fellow
of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the
Directors Guild of Great Britian