The Pete and Lynne Simpson Student Enrichment Fund is named after members of a prominent Wyoming political family. Wyoming Public Radio’s Melodie Edwards sat down with Lynne Simpson to talk about the importance of humanities in the Cowboy State. For Lynne, it started with her childhood growing up in Cody.
Editor’s Note: This interview was edited lightly for clarity and brevity.
Lynne Simpson: In the fifth grade, I went to Miss Ditman, who smelled the lollipops and lilacs. I mean, she was just a wonderful woman. And I said, ‘I'd like to write a play, and I'd like to direct the play, and then I'd like to star in the play.’ And she said, ‘Okay.’ And so we did it.
She let me produce, write and direct this play of 10 year olds. The end of the story is she went to my mother and she said, ‘Fran, that was a 50-page play!’ She said, ‘I never had any idea what I was getting into!’ Well, I think that story could be told all around rural life.
Melodie Edwards: Do you remember what the plot of this play was that you wrote?
LS: Oh, it was very shallow. I think it was about behaving well, and about good manners. I made a lot of fun of people being punished if they didn't behave. We made a drama out of it. We all were very well disciplined, and some of us were very rebellious about that. So that made the play fun.
ME: A lot of times we think about little kids growing up in rural communities, that one of the great things is that you get to be this big fish in a small pond.
LS: Well, that's true now for little kids. It's true for adults. We have people moving to the rural communities because they're looking for their identities in a smaller arena of human experience, and they love the idea that they can have an impact, be known as an energy in your town.
Bigger isn't always better for human development on an individual scale. I think these rural towns have a lot to offer because we do have an identity and we do have opportunities. So yes, it's like the pioneer woman on a dang wagon. They brought the organ, and around the fireplace the kids were singing. So the arts brings some kindness and beauty to a sometimes difficult rural life, some kind of celebration to balance the abrasiveness of the hard life that the frontier was offering. Very important.
ME: I love this quote from you. ‘The arts are a very necessary part of blessing and developing our humanness.’ I wonder if you can talk a little bit about how that has been true for Wyoming.
LS: There's something about being close to nature. The profound connection we have with the skies, with the mountains, with the beauty, with the air, I think they really have a connection which then brings out things in you that have to do with spirit and creativity and a place for thought.
I think that that's what we might miss if we don't cultivate that intentionally. Because now, we have too many things coming at us already formed. It's so passive. When I talk about the development of the whole human, one of the premises I have is that the human is really a spiritual animal. Great people have sought nature. You'll notice a lot of people tell their stories and they'll seek the wide open spaces. They'll seek simplicity, in order to bloom, in order to think.
ME: I understand that you actually did leave Wyoming. You went to New York. Tell me that story.
LS: If you're a shallow young person, you think, ‘If I'm going to be in the theater, [I] have to go to New York.’ This is such an erroneous idea, but I didn't have anyone to stop me. So I arrived in New York with actual pieces of sagebrush coming out of my ears! It didn't prepare me for a very difficult and complicated life.
If you're seeking a professional life where you make money as an actor in the theater, it is a monumental task and very difficult. I was not prepared. And frankly, the absence of running around in the sagebrush near Shoshone River was hard on me to be away from. I missed the sun. I was trying to love everybody in New York, which got me in a lot of trouble. You can't walk down the street in New York the way you walk down the street in Meeteetse or Cody, where you can love everybody that you see coming at you.
It closed down a Wyoming spirit. I just closed down.
But let me tell you, theater is more alive for more people in Timbuktu and Riverton, Wyoming, and I see great talent and great intelligence in the theater arts.
ME: The Wyoming Humanities Council had quite a rough year. When those kind of services are being paired down, how is that going to affect Wyoming and our humanness, across the state, when those kinds of programs are being diminished?
LS: It will affect us. When you no longer have to understand your constitution or your pioneer history, or you no longer have to read the greatest literature, you lose your humanness right there. We have a legacy of being human. You can't be a great citizen – I don't think you can be a great parent – until you're connected with more than science and the paycheck.
Humanness is about how we relate to our environment. So the rural setting will always have a place in an artist's life.
