Patricia Hoag Simon

About

Patricia served as Coordinator for Musical Theatre at Marymount Manhattan College from 1991 to 2020. She designed our various music theatre curricula in the music theatre minor and later the BFA as well as taught Musical Theatre Techniques, Scene into Song, Auditioning for Musicals, Senior Showcase and Special Topics courses such as The Musicals of Prince and Sondheim, New Musicals and Musicals That Won the Tony as Best Musical and Best Revival of a Musical.

Pat directed Baby, She Loves Me, The Grass Harp, The Human Heart, Plain and Fancy, Carousel, The Human Comedy, Ragtime and South Pacific for the College.  Additionally, she introduced music theatre professionals such as Robert Durkin, Josh Bergasse, George Faison, Marcia Milgrom Dodge, Christopher D’Amboise, William Foster McDaniel, David Loud, Lee Summers, Janet Noh and Stephen Oremus to the college, where our students worked with them on such shows as The Boyfriend, What I Want You To Know, Bright Lights Big City, Drood, Pangaea, Vaudeville, and Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Our partnerships with Pearl Studios, Manhattan Movement and Art, Studio Maestro, The York Theatre Company, Ballet Hispanico and National Dance Institute are the result of Pat’s efforts to truly make New York City our campus for musical theatre.

Pat selected a diverse faculty of over forty musical theatre professionals in the fields of music theatre history, music theory, dance, private voice, auditioning, and acting for musical theatre. Among them were Dana Moore, Vivian Reed, Joyce Hall, Rommy Sandhu, Damon Evans, Jessica McRoberts, Matthew Deming, Jon Price, Stephane Duret, Jeff Shade, Tera Lee Pollin, Stephen Harding, Kyle Pleasant, Whitney Sprayberry, Mandarin Wu, Lori Leshner, Tommy Scrivens, Wilma Wever, John Welch, Grant Anderson, Charlotte Surkin, Jane Seaman, Paul Katz, John Znidarsic, Michael Lofton, Chris O’Grady, Leo Chang, Michael Montel, Lennie Watts, MaryAnne Piccolo, Steven Cuevas, Adriel Garcia, Barrie Gelles, John Tedeschi, Sean Cameron, Justin Fischer, Yan Li, Elijah Caldwell, Tyler Knauf and Debra Vanderlinde.

Frank Wildhorn was introduced to MMC by Pat and as a result, he not only received an Honorary Degree, but wrote the college a new Alma Mater. Other individuals Pat introduced to MMC who received Honorary Degrees are choreographer Patricia Birch, singer/actor Betty Buckley and AMAS founder and performer Rosetta Lenoire.

Prior to MMC, Pat was a professional actor, appearing in A Shot in the Dark, Dames at Sea, Cabaret and Fiddler on the Roof. She worked as Casting Director and Literary Advisor for the WPA Theatre, casting Robert Harling’s Steel Magnolias. For several years she worked at New York Agency and Bauman Hiller Associates assisting Mark Redanty before taking teaching and curriculum design positions with Musical Theatre Works and The American Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts.

Pat is especially proud of the MMC January Projects funded by the Frederick Loewe Foundation which have allowed students to work on new musicals or take master classes with Dev Janki, Patricia Birch, Larry Fuller, Larry Grossman, Charles Strouse, Christopher Cerf, Paul Jacobs, Bill Russell, Sarah Durkee, Adam Guettel, Damon Evans and Barbara Siman among many.

Guests to Pat’s seminar classes included Elaine Stritch, Stephen Sondheim, Chita Rivera, Harold Prince, Arthur Laurents, Jerry Mitchell, Jack O’Brien, Marvin Hamlisch, Donna McKechnie, Betty Buckley, Jelani Alladin, Baayork Lee, Pat Suzuki and Graciela Danielle.

Produced with John Znidarsic, the annual Marymount Manhattan Holiday Concert at Bruno Walter Auditorium in Lincoln Center Library became a highlight of the season featuring MMC alums and current students performing original and classic songs.

Pat served as founding advisor in the first years of the Music Theatre Association (MTA) and Club Mosaic with Roger Ellis and Timothy Johnson.

Her Musical Theatre Intensives in partnership with The York Theatre introduced students from around the country to the teachings of Luis Perez and Ken Leigh Rogers.

An oral historian, her work on Joshua Logan as well as her collected oral histories is housed at the Goodspeed Library of Musical Theatre in East Haddam, Connecticut.

Recently, Pat developed our International Summer Musical Theater Intensive. Students from Myongji University in South Korea (2016) and Shu-Te University in Taiwan (2018, 2019) were welcomed to MMC to study with our distinguished music theatre faculty–culminating in a showing of their work.

The endowed Andrew Zerman Master Class Series, conceived by Pat and funded by the friends and family of our valued adjunct faculty member who passed away in 2018–will make teaching by esteemed professionals possible for many years to come.

Pat enjoys spending time with her friends and family–especially her grandchildren.