“She’s got that mad face on her that can stop a train,” says Mr. Sims with the eye of a director describing the face of a neighbor after a dramatic incident. Neal Sims, a fifty year old off off Broadway actor/director always had an instinct for drama.
Mr. Sims,who has no siblings was born in Queens Village and lived on Long Island projected early on that acting would take the lead in his life.
At the age of six, Mr. Sims discovered his inspiration in Agnes Moorehead who appeared in the 1960’s show “Bewitched” and the movie “Hush… Hush Sweet Charlotte” marveling at Moorehead’s transformation from witch to “white trash drawl.”
By age seventeen Mr. Sims became an amateur thespian doing community theatre in Long Island. After high school, he also studied “The Diary of Anne Frank” in 1977 while attending summer session at the influential American Academy of Dramatic Arts’ New York campus http://www.aada.org/home/home.html.
But, later after working for a publishing company in Manhattan Mr. Sims isn’t really clear on why his life took a different route for him. His dreams of a life in theatre taking an intermission; says Mr. Sims “life just happened.”
It wasn’t until the mid 1990’s that he returned to his beloved theatre in his late thirties.
Mr. Sims, whose single and lives in Jackson Heights, Queens with his recently widowed mother moving from Florida and living just a few blocks away recalls telling his friends that one day he would direct, “If something should land in my lap, I’d do it.”
Opportunity landed one day when he took over direction and designed the set for his first production: “The Chill on Lake St. Clair”.
Mr. Sims went on to direct and act in other off off Broadway productions like: “Psycho Sorority Girl”, “Bad Dames go to Hell”, and “Sleeping Beauty or Coma”.
While the opening of “Sleeping Beauty or Coma” at the Red Room Theatre in the Village lost its lead actor two weeks in and was delayed by the terrorist attacks on 9/11 for a week the show went on to a successful three week run.
With the show’s last week staring Mr. Sims in the lead role of Sebastian Lorre it brought Mr. Sims back to theatre in a grand way.
Though he first thought, “I must be outta my mind” seconds before being cued onstage. Mr. Sims rejoiced in the crowds’ laughter despite his long absence from theatre adding, “I kinda like being in these things.”
Wow, if that isn’t the picture of success, look at the sole of that shoe, did he roll a bum for those threads and shoes? I knew this sad, bloated toad when he and Psychic George menaced the gay bars on Long Island. Sims was as ugly acting as he was looking, a nasty, sarcastic, condescending, effeminate looking as well as effeminate acting creature. Back then he had a ridiculous looking permanent and seemed already bitter. He lived in Bay Shore, which is probably a social step backward from Wyandanch, and he never learned how to drive. OMG, what a major loser, and I’m sure, looking at the hand gestures, he still harbors the dream of being the next Harvey Fierstein. $15/ ticket on his last show, when was that, Little Miss Twoshoes? Tell me dear, how’s your love life with Michael long gone? My God, with that short hair, you look so masculine and handsome and SO well dressed, I thought Zac Efron had gotten a crewcut! LOL LOL LOL LOL Yeah right, Zac hit by a truck and left for roadkill a few weeks. That is a picture I will long treasure.