writing & directing
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Hamish believes that the theatre is one of the last places where we listen to people in real time, in real space, without interruption. He thinks that this grants us a unique ability to confront, console, and genuinely surprise our audience. In no other form do we request the undivided attention of humans we’ve never met, and this is why theatre, when it succeeds, is a magnificent means of bringing us closer together.
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“Hamish is the best lyricist I’ve ever seen in all my years of teaching.”
– Prof. David H. Bell
Hamish believes that the theatre is one of the last places where we listen to people in real time, in real space, without interruption. He thinks that this grants us a unique ability to confront, console, and genuinely surprise our audience. In no other form do we request the undivided attention of humans we’ve never met, and this is why theatre, when it succeeds, is a magnificent means of bringing us closer together.
...
“Hamish is the best lyricist I’ve ever seen in all my years of teaching.”
– Prof. David H. Bell
S.I.M.P.S.
(book & lyrics; original workshop director)
“Kevin Everyman is stuck. He knows that boys need to talk about their feelings, but he also knows that his voice is probably not what the world needs to hear. With this in mind, he joins the Self-Improvement & Male Preservation Society, or “S.I.M.P.S.” – a cult of young men promising to teach Kevin how to protect the world from the dangers of his masculinity. But when the society uses harrowing violence to uphold its supposed progressivism, Kevin must reckon more honestly with his role in today’s gender landscape. A pulp-horror satire with a violent jazz-pop score, S.I.M.P.S. uses sensibilities like those of Fight Club, South Park, Michael R. Jackson, and Midsommar as it embarks on a daring, hysterical, complex interrogation of the manosphere.”
development history:
S.I.M.P.S. was selected for residency at IRT, an experimental theatre off-Broadway, where it sold out this multi-week production in January and February 2025. Prior to that, the piece (then called “The Brotherhood of DIX”) was workshopped and presented in June 2023 by Space Space Revolution in Toronto. More info about scenes, song demos, lyric sheets, etc. is available upon request. Other info is at simpsmusical.com.
NY production creative:
book & lyrics by Hamish Marissen-Clark
book & lyrics by Hamish Marissen-Clark
music by Alec Steinhorndirected by Nicholas Polonio
musical direction by Patrick B. Phillips
produced by Shannon Molly Flynn
set by Cat Raynor
sound by Germán Martínez
lights by Paige Seber
costumes by Martín Lara Avila
stage management by Ema Zivkovic
NY production cast:
John El-Jor
Cory Jeacoma
Walter Higginbotham
Aaron Arnell Harrington
Logan Farine
Kamari Saxon
Gen Parton-Shin*
*(replaced Karl Josef Co due to illness)
Dead Man’s Plunge
(director)
Brad and Chad are two old rivals who happen to recognize each other on their way up what they think is a ski lift. We soon learn, however, that Brad and Chad have each mistaken the other for a different Brad and a different Chad that they’d known in life previous. Throughout the play, they continue their ascent up their ski lift until they reach the Dead Man’s Plunge, at which point Chad and Brad fall into the same pattern that all Brads and Chads have always fallen into.
In this piece, I felt that there was a certain musicality to the characters’ manners of speech. Creaking ski lift sounds were vital to the forward momentum of DEAD MAN’S PLUNGE’s text, but to me it felt inauthentic to use realistic sound cues in this play’s non-realistic world. Instead, I used a violinist who stood center throughout the piece and functioned as a musical narrator. The creaking sounds were played by on the violin in varying ways depending on the intensity, timing, and length of each creak. We also collaborated to include a longer solo that was featured at both the beginning and the end. Like the circular staging of the ski lift, this was meant to symbolize the story’s cyclical nature.
A new work, DEAD MAN’S PLUNGE was presented in April 2022 at Downtown Chicago’s Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts in conjunction with Northwestern’s MFA in Writing for the Stage & Screen and Theatre departments.
creative:
text by Allison Theveny
directed by Hamish Marissen-Clark
produced by Northwestern’s MFA in Writing for the Stage & Screen
lights by Seojung Jang
sound by Deon Custard
projections by Michael Frazel
festival production by Katie Lupica
fest. artistic direction by Skyler Tarnas
fest. co-artistic direction by Alex Joyce
cast:
Peter Carroll
Stephen Peng
Max Reichek (violin)
Songs for a New World
(director)
In early 2021, Hamish was awarded a grant from Northwestern University to adapt Jason Robert Brown’s Songs for a New World into a cinematic piece of theatre. Even though it’s often referred to as a song cycle, Hamish thinks that Songs has a robust dramatic arc, and this was something he wanted to illuminate with his direction.
creative:
music & lyrics by Jason Robert Brown
directed by Hamish Marissen-Clark
produced by Clay Lawhead
costumes by Lucy London
set construction by Luke Arnold & Olivia Behr
props by Matthew McGrory
cast:
Danielle Llevada
Adelina Marinello
Emily Somé (Les Misérables Nat. Tour)
Carson Stewart (The Notebook, B’way)
Sons of Hollywood
(assistant director)
creative:
produced by Windy City Playhousetext by Carl Messinger & Barry Ball
directed by David H. Bell
assistant directed by Hamish Marissen-Clark
set by Lauren Nigri
costumes by Sydney Moore
lights by Anthony Forchielli
sound by Willow James
props & set dressing by Foiles
musical direction by Shraman Ghosh
cast:
Abby Lee
Adam Jennings
Adriel Irizarry
Ben Dow
Jonathan Connolly
Kyle Patrick
Max Stewart
Trey DeLuna
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