Contact Information

simpsoke@dickinson.edu

Montgomery House Room 5
717-254-8267

Bio

Keola Simpson is a Native Hawaiian theatre-maker from Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi, a stage and screen actor in New York City, and an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Dickinson College. His 2020 production at the University of Hawaiʻi, I’m Lot Lane (a solo effort), garnered 11 national awards at The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in 2021 including the Citizen Artist Award, David Mark Cohen Playwriting Award, and Overall Production. He was a nominee for the United States Artists Fellowship (theatre) that same year and a featured artist at the Consortium of Asian American Theatres and Artists 2022 ConFest. In 2023, Keola was seen in the Roundabout Theatre Company’s, Refocus Project, which aims to transform the American theatre canon. Being in its third season, and spotlighting AAPI playwrights from the 20th and 21st centuries, Keola starred in the 1994 play, Ola Nā Iwi (The Bones Live), by Victoria Nalani Kneubuhl, which was taped in front of a live audience at the Laura Pels Theatre in NYC and streamed for free throughout the fall. Keola spent much of his childhood as a performer and musician, traveling western Canada with his mother's touring Polynesian revue, Ka ʻOhana.

Education

• B.A., California State University, Fullerton, 2004
• M.F.A., University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, 2021.