David Simpatico is a playwright, librettist and performance artist.
Operas In Development:
The Life & Death of Alan Turing with Justine Chen, commissioned by ALT
That Hellbound Train with Lisa Despain (Opera America Award Grant)
LIFEafterLIFE: Virtuality Sal and Whida Peru, music by Josh Schmidt produced by Groundswell Theatricals and ART
Dickens’ A Christmas Carol with Will Todd
Rose of Sharon with Heather Christian
Stage:
Newsies, Jr, adaptation of Broadway musical for middle-school; Disney Theatrical Group
Wilde About Whitman, Published In The Idaho Review, Fall 2018
PG-13
Screenplays:
Waiting For The Ball To Drop
Mike’s Makeover
MOST LIKELY TO SAY:
“Yes, and...”
ON THE JOB:
“I love exploring the boundaries of music theater; I love the profound dynamic between the personal and the universal.”
PRESS:
”In addition to being one of the most powerful operas of the last decade, The Screams of Kitty Genovese gave me hope for the renewal of musical theater.”
—Robert Brustein, New Republic, 2001
"…it was Simpatico’s brilliant stroke to recognize Turing’s dramatic story as an ideal match for the opera genre…one can’t imagine [that] The Life and Death[s] of Alan Turing won’t someday be on the calendar of one of the world’s great opera houses…”
—Amy Muncie, Picture This Post, 2019
David Simpatico is a playwright, librettist and performance artist whose work has been presented at major theatres around the globe, including London’s Hammersmith Apollo, Lincoln Center, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and the New York Shakespeare Festival.Career highlights include: the stage adaptation of High School Musical (Disney Theatricals); the full length opera, The Life and Death(s) of Alan Turing (Justine Chen, composer; commissioned by American Lyric Theatre); the sung-thru music drama, The Screams of Kitty Genovese (Will Todd, composer; Edinburgh Fringe Festival); and the libretto for Pulitzer Prize-winner Aaron J. Kernis’ Garden Of Light (NY Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall, conducted by Kurt Masur). David recently earned his MFA in Creative Writing from the MountainView Writers at SNHU. He is currently adapting Robert Bloch’s That Hell-Bound Train as a jazz opera with composer Lisa DeSpain. Two new non-musical plays are currently being shopped around: Wilde About Whitman, and Waiting for the Ball to Drop. David is an alumnus of the Composer Librettist Development Program at American Lyric Theater, and a graduate of Northwestern University.