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 ok, house boats are the best way to enjoy a lazy river, and family is the most important. But… as it goes with the learning, those revelations didn’t occur until she went away. 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.

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”. After only playing the accordion for a about 6 months, she was hired by Ralph Lee of The Mettawee River Theater to be a musician, playing along side the legend, Harry Mann. Her desire to create music in a theatrical context, also led her to work with Brian Mertes 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), Ordway Center for the Performing Arts (Rocky Horror Show), and The History Theater (These Shining Lives). Her work with Kevin Kling was first featured at the 2006 Minnesota Fringe Festival show “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, where she and Kling returned this spring to work on and premiere their new work entitled “Breakin’ Hearts and Takin’ Names” directed by Braden Abraham. The 2006 Fringe Fest, also premiered Simone’s one woman show “Tall Tale of a Broke Heart”, a collaboration with writer and director Randy Reyes. Simone has begun to sing along side the ladies of Lily’s Burlesque, in collaboration with their musical director, Robert Bell. She has been heard on the airways of Public Radio, first, with MPR’s Stage Sessions with Heather McElhatton and most recently on the Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor.