ON STAGE!

Shakespeare In Love the play

The ARTISTS!

Debra Lyman
Debra Lyman is thrilled to play Queen Elizabeth in ATM’s production of Shakespeare in Love. Debra met Jeanmarie Simpson in 2018 when Jeanmarie introduced her play Pineapple and Other Options to her, and worked with Jeanmarie and the ATM production team to bring it to the stage in November, 2021. The opportunity to play Betsy in Pineapple is one of Debra’s most proud achievements. Debra returned to school after her children went to college to obtain her AA in Theatre Arts and graduated with distinction in 2013. She has performed throughout the Valley since that time. Select performances are Barbecue (Black Theatre Troupe), Tea for Three (Stage Left Theatre), A Doll’s House Part 2 (Stage Left Theatre), Medea (Now and Then Theatre), Whisper Sweetly (Brelby Theatre) Something Wicked (Davisson Entertainment), John (Stray Cat Theatre) ariZoni award recipient, Manifesto (Outloud 2nd Annual LGBT New Plays), Masque of the Red Death (A.C.T. Inc.), Julius Caesar (Class 6 Theatre).
Kiley Bishop (Viola) is beyond thrilled to return to Arizona Theatre Matters and bring this special show to life! In 2021, she played Helena in ATM’s virtual production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Other performance highlights include Scuttle in The Little Mermaid (Starlight), for which she received an ariZoni Award nomination, Miss Shields in A Christmas Story: the Musical (Desert Stages), Electric Skate in The Spongebob Musical (Starlight), Miss Gardner in Carrie (Brelby), and Barren Mind Improv and Farce Side Sketch Comedy (ASU). Kiley is a marketing guru, lover of fine art and design, and avid roller skater. She would like to thank ATM and Jeanmarie for this once in a lifetime opportunity, and her husband, family, and friends for their unyielding support!
Kiley Bishop Headshot
Kiley Bishop
RC Contreras Headshot
RC Contreras
RC Contreras (Henslowe) is very excited to be working with Arizona Theatre Matters. RC has performed all over the Valley. Some of her roles include, Ben Affleck in Mindy Kaling’s Matt and Ben at B3 Productions, Angelo in William Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors (Southwest Shakespeare Company), the Stage Manager in an adaptation of Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of An Author at SMCC Spotlight Productions, Becky in A Woman on Stage at B3 Productions, Mom in John Perovich’s Be My Little Baby at Space 55, Mabel an 80 year old woman addicted to sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll in A Bloody Mary Christmas, at Space 55, and Mickey in Mom and Dad at the Lesbian Bar, a play she wrote for The Pandora Festival at Arizona Women’s Theatre Company. RC would like to thank Jeanmarie for her generosity, and opportunities. RC would also like to thank her mom. Thank you mom, for always letting be my true self, and for enduring my teen years. I love you mom!
Roberta Rubin (Nurse) got up on the stage at age 4, and ever since, has refused to get down. Her early years were spent dedicated to Ballet, but finding her voice, Ro gravitated to performing Improv and Stand-Up Comedy as well as Dramatic and Comedic Theatre. Since meeting the brilliant Jeanmarie Simpson, at a Dramatist Guild reading, Ro has harbored a fantasy of working with her. Dreams do come true!!

Roberta Rubin Headshot
Roberta Rubin Headshot
Matt Clarke Headshot
Matt Clarke
Rev. Dr. The Matt Clarke (Will) is a multiple Scottie Award-winning ASU grad, and adventurer. He has recently performed in Ashley Naftule’s Radio Free Europa and Canterbury Tarot, John Perovich’s Be My Little Baby (where he previously worked alongside Brady) and missing grace, F. Thomas Vincent’s Woman and a Suitcase, and Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros. In pursuing his passion for new works, he has recently appeared in readings of John Perovich’s Monster of Tempe Town Lake and The Macbethest Spectacuthon Ever, and Jeanmarie Simpson’s The Jewish Question as well as reading at The Valdez Theatre Conference. Matt is beyond psyched to bring Will and Shakespeare in Love to life for its Arizona premier alongside Jeanmarie and Brady more than 2 years (and one plague) since their first attempt to do so. As always, he is grateful for the love and support of his family (Emmalyn, Melinda, Marie, Skyler) for their love and unerring support, his dear friends (especially Cody, John, Jake) who keep him performing (sometimes forcibly) and don’t miss a single show, and for Jeanmarie’s warm invitation to return to this role. Let’s make magic happen! Matt Clarke enjoys long walks, deep conversation, existential quandaries, and car karaoke.
Tyler Sines (Marlowe) is thrilled to be diving into his first production with Arizona Theatre Matters. He has been studying acting at Scottsdale Community College for the past few years. His recent roles with the school include Sir Andrew in Twelfth Night, Clown in The 39 Steps , Lionel Toop in See How They Run, and Pippin in Pippin. Recently, he was a member of the ensemble for Southwest Shakespeare Company’s production of King Lear, and can be seen this January as Dwight in Dead Man’s Cell Phone with Stage Left Productions. He would like to thank Jeanmarie for including him in this very exciting process.
Tyler Sines Headshot
Brady Anderson Headshot
Brady Anderson

Brady Anderson (Wessex) is proud to debut with Arizona Theatre Matters with this cast and crew for this show! Once upon a time he was choreographed by Jeanmarie Bishop in an original piece, Woman On Stage, where he played Man on TV with B3 Productions, and she also said some very nice things about him in her Broadway World review of another original show, Depend on Me, where he played Dad with Brelby. Some other roles of his in the Phoenix Valley area include: Harry the Horse in Guys and Dolls, Herr Zeller in Sound of Music, Cinderella’s Father in Into The Woods (DST), Ensemble in Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (PVCC) Judge Turpin in Sweeney Todd (MCC), Brassett in Charley’s Aunt (Hale), Ezekiel Cheever in The Crucible, Polisher/Winkie General in Wizard of Oz, Grinch/Yertle the Turtle in Seussical (Theater Works). His actual Shakespeare roles include: Burgundy/Oswald in King Lear (SWS) with fellow castmate Tyler Sines, Duke Frederick/Senior in As You Like It, Don John/Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing, Oberon in Midsummer Night’s Dream, (Brelby), and Daniel in Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged (Echo Theatre). Plus a time where he was Snout in the last scene of Midsummer taking place at Japanese Friendship Gardens with Brelby which featured another castmate, Debra Lyman. There was also the time that he designed the lights for Be My Little Baby at Space 55 which featured Matt Clarke. He’s thankful for the support of his family who tolerates his addiction to theatre. By day, he’s a standardized patient at several learning institutions, helping future nurses and doctors simulate their future career encounters. In regards to this show, as someone involved in health care (sort of) he shudders at the thought of encouraging tobacco consumption.

Jeanmarie Simpson (director) is the Founding Artistic Director or Universal Access Productions / Arizona Theatre Matters. In 1989, she founded the Nevada Shakespeare Company, from which she retired in 2009. She has been a teaching artist since 1984 and has served on the Nevada Arts Council and other rosters for nearly 40 years. At 15, Jeanmarie began directing in Toronto and has since directed dozens of educational and regional theatre productions. Her most recent project was Kindertransport, a benefit for the Jewish Federation of Nevada Holocaust education programs. Also in Las Vegas, she directed The Diary of Anne Frank for Actors Repertory Theatre and Pinocchio for the Lied Discovery Children’s Museum. For Nevada Shakespeare Company, Jeanmarie directed Quilters, Painting Churches, The Tempest, Night, Mother, Anything Goes, The Corn is Green, Steel Magnolias, Annie Get Your Gun with Lacy J Dalton, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Richard III, The Trojan Women, King Lear, As You Like It, and many others. For UAP/ATM, she directed The Dark Side, Dracula, Hamlet, The Pirates of Penzance, Under Milk Wood and her plays, Pineapple and Other Options and The Jewish Question. This winter, she will direct her play, When Churchyards Yawn, for Northern Nevada’s flagship regional company, Bruka Theatre. To celebrate the Nevadan to Nevadan Poetry Project, the state’s Poet Laureate, Gailmarie Pahmeier, commissioned Jeanmarie to create and direct an original Reader’s Theatre production at the historic Oats Park Arts Center on June 10th. She will direct When Churchyards Yawn in Sydney Australia, in July and August. She is a reader for the Ashland New Plays Festival in Ashland, Oregon, and served on the 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Theatre panel. She is thrilled to be directing the Arizona premiere of Shakespeare In Love with this marvelous cast and company.

Jeanmarie Simpson Headshot