Simon trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
In the early nineties, he set up Thin Language Theatre Company with Michael Sheen to produce FOREVER YOURS MARIE LOU by Michel Tremblay, NOTHING TO PAY (which he also adapted from the novel by Caradoc Evans), and his first original play BADFINGER which premiered at The Donmar with Rhys Ifans in the lead and earning a nomination for Most Promising Playwright in The Evening Standard Drama Awards.
He has also written WALES>ALASKA for the National Theatre Studio, adapted BADFINGER for BBC Wales, GARAGELAND for a UK national tour, MILK AND HONEY for Soho Theatre, CRASH for BBC Wales/ Red Planet, THE ELSINORE PROJECT for Volcano, as well as, more recently, ARARAT 2.0 (2018) and A BRIEF HISTORY OF UNDERMINING (2019) for the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama.
For seven years, he was Artistic Director of Sgript Cymru – the national company for new work by playwrights – and a driving force in contemporary theatre across Wales. As its Artistic Director, he was responsible for over twenty new productions and a rolling programme of writer development, including first plays by Gary Owen, Tim Price, Alan Harris, Daf James and Tracy Harris. His directing work for Sgript Cymru included Gary Owen’s GHOST CITY (Best New Play and Best Actress TiW Awards 2005), which took the company to New York, CROSSINGS by Clare Duffy, which played in Wales, London and Edinburgh, Meic Povey’s LIFE OF RYAN… AND RONNIE (Best Production and Best Actor TiW Awards 2006), and ACQUA Nero by Meredydd Barker.
Subsequently, he became the first ever Welsh Fellow on The Clore Leadership Programme – a development programme to encourage leaders in culture. He has been an Arts Council of Wales National Adviser and a Creative Wales Award winner. in 2010, he spent the year as Associate Director at the Torch Theatre in Milford Haven where he directed FLOWERS FROM TUNISIA by Laurence Allan.
Simon is now the founding Director of Lucid that takes as its mission to produce “vivid, urgent, must- see theatre… exploring the world through heartfelt new writing and boldly re-imagined classics.” After his adaptation of Chekhov’s Platonov as THIS IS THE PLAY WITHOUT A TITLE and his acclaimed version of Ibsen’s Little Eyolf (re-imagined under the title LITTLE WOLF) which toured nationally in 2017, Lucid is currently developing his version of the fantasy novel Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones.
