Simone Perrin

About

Simone is a Minneapolis based theater artist, accordionista and chanteuse. She grew up on the banks of the mighty Mississippi in Winona, MN, where she learned that singing for your supper is just fine and house boats are the best way to enjoy a lazy river. She spent five years at Oberlin College and Conservatory, singing art songs, making performance arts, raising hippie co-op breads, playing improv comedy with The Primitive Streakers and meeting some of the best people ever to be met.

After college, she followed the migration of friends to New York City where she spent five very full years. In NYC, along with Gregory Pierce and Hannah Cabell, she became a founding member of The Bad Astronauts, an east village based sketch comedy group. It was in New York where she started playing the accordion, appearing for a short stint in the (all female) Main Squeeze Accordion Orchestra, busking on several subway platforms, and accompanying herself as the love-scorned Vampire in the Bad Astronauts show “Phallaxy Quest”. With accordion in toe, she worked with The Mettawee River Theater, dir. Ralph Lee, playing along side the legend, Harry Mann. Her desire to create music in a theatrical context, also led her to work with Brian Mertes/Melissa Kievman and the Lake Lucille Chekhov Project, making music with the likes of Lucas Papaelias and Jon Pratt. Oh yeah, Yarmulkabra!

After a good stint in New York, Simone decided to make her way home to the Mississippi, her family and the incredibly supportive and inspiring artistic community in the Twin Cities. Here, she has worked with several theaters, including Theater Latte Da (Gypsy, Passage of Dreams), Mixed Blood Theater (Pajama Game), Open Eye Figure Theater (Come and Get It, Flight, Folks and Heroes), Ordway Center for the Performing Arts (Rocky Horror Show), and The History Theater (These Shining Lives, A Tale of Twin Cities). In the 2006 Fringe Fest, Simone premiered her one woman show “Tall Tale of a Broke Heart” and also started her collaboration with Kevin Kling, creating “In Hopes of Claudia”. She and Kling have gone on to work on several other shows, including the world premiere of “How? How? Why? Why?Why?” at the Seattle Repertory Theater directed by David Esbjorson, where she and Kling returned in 2008 to work on and premiere their new work entitled “Breakin’ Hearts and Takin’ Names” directed by Braden Abraham. Most recently, she and Kevin premiered “A Tale of Twin Cities” at the History Theater in St. Paul, directed by Suzy Messerole.  Her work with Kling has brought her to locations around the Midwest as well as New York City, Indianapolis and Cincinnati, where they performed “How? How?…” for the audience of the Playhouse in the Park. She has been heard on the airways of Public Radio, with MPR’s Stage Sessions with Heather McElhatton, on the Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor, on Mid Morning with Kari Miller as part of Hippocrates Cafe and most recently as Dorothy in “Scarecrow on Fire” written by and performed with Kevin Kling. In 2009, Simone recorded her first album at the UBS Forum in the MPR studios. “Hummingbird” was released in September of 2009 and features the brilliant words of Kevin Kling and the amazing talents of Prudence Johnson, Dan Chouinard, Robert Bell, Gary Schulte and The Brass Messengers.

When not performing, Simone spends her days cooking, gardening, crafting and raising a family with husband John and their new addition, Homer Zinn, welcomed into the world in February.