Joe Simonelli is a man of many talents

Danny Kaye starred in “The Man from Brooklyn” but Joe Simonelli is the playwright from Brooklyn.

When he was 12 and growing up in that famed borough, Simonelli enjoyed watching Kaye in movie theaters. But one day his mom asked, “Do you want to see him in person? He’s on Broadway. Come on, we’ll go.”

That was the beginning of Simonelli’s love affair with the arts, including music and acting.

The Southwest Florida playwright and a director didn’t get started writing plays until he was 40 but he caught up quickly with peers who started much younger. He’s written 22 plays — comedies, dramas and ghost story thrillers — including one currently being produced at the Lemon Bay Playhouse in Englewood.

“Sicilians In The Basement” is a romantic comedy about a couple who open a Swiss restaurant in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.

He’s also had his plays performed in Port Charlotte and Fort Myers theaters.

Charlotte Players produced two of Simonelli’s plays, “Men Are Dogs” and “With This Ring”, about three years ago.

EARLY INFLUENCES

Simonelli is Brooklyn-born and while part of his heart is now in Florida, he said a chunk of it will never leave Brooklyn.

His early life and parents’ influence permeate Simonelli’s work.

Simonelli’s family is half-Sicilian, half-Neapolitan (from Naples, Italy). Growing up around theater, he enjoyed both the movies and the stage.

“We were all exposed to both Broadway and music from an early age in my family,” said Simonelli, one of five kids.

As a teen, he was comfortable on stage performing both as an actor and playing bass guitar. That background enabled the budding playwright to write musicals as well as comedies at a young age.

In high school, he performed in “Westside Story” as a Jet and “I had a gas,” Simonelli said, conjuring 1960s slang for having a good time. “That kind of gave me the bug.”

He also was a part-time musician in his father’s wedding orchestra.

When Simonelli married, he put theater callbacks on hold in favor of making sales calls on Wall Street. After a divorce in 1998, he once again devoted some of his time to the arts.

He took acting lessons and started performing in community theater. Over the years he was “in a ton of plays.”

He also waa the resident playwright for the First Avenue Playhouse, a small New Jersey nonprofit theater where he wrote one play a year.

“They’re still doing my plays there,” he said.

Simonelli said returning to theater in 1998 put him at a disadvantage. He was competing with playwrights half his age with degrees from New York University, which he attended for two years before graduating from St. Francis College in Brooklyn.

Simonelli may be best-known for his comedy “Men Are Dogs”, which he said has been very popular in theaters in the United States, Canada and England. It’s his “flagship comedy.”

His follow-up to “Men Are Dogs” is “Old Ringers”. Other notable plays he’s written include “Roommates”, “Heaven Help Me” and “Romance.com”.

“Roommates”, an “Odd Couple”-styled play based on his life as a divorcee, “wrote itself,” he said.

Simonelli wrote two plays because he had vivid dreams about them, including one in which he talks to Shakespeare about the theater (“Where There’s a Will”).

MOVE TO FLORIDA

Simonelli retired from Wall Street in 2011. He and his soulmate and partner, Lori Sigrist, have been in a committed relationship for more than 14 years. They moved from Staten Island to Fort Myers before the coronavirus pandemic.

He wanted to be near the theaters where his plays were finding audiences. She was hired as executive director of Lemon Bay Playhouse about four years ago.

“Joe Simonelli is a unique playwright in that all his plays, including his most popular comedies, involve elaborate plot twists that are not commonly found in average stories,” Sigrist said. “His work is never predictable.”

He’s currently producing a couple of plays with Fort Myers Theatre and Lemon Bay Playhouse, both community theaters, and recently inked a deal to work with Broadway Palm Dinner Theatre, a professional theater in Fort Myers.

Broadway Palm will be premiering “Half Baked”, a play Simonelli and Sigrist wrote together. They agreed to 35-45 performances of the play in Broadway Palm’s small black box theater beginning next April.

“It’s a hilarious comedy,” Simonelli said. “I’m pretty happy about that. That play is taking off.”

TIPS

For budding playwrights hoping to find an audience, Simonelli suggests striking a deal with a venue such as a church or a Knights of Columbus. Offer the play and split the proceeds.

A more challenging but potentially more lucrative option is to get your play published. Publishing your play can bring more opportunities for theaters to acquire the licensing needed to host productions of your play, he said.

A published play gets a great deal more exposure among theatrical producers than an unpublished play.

Producers (and you) can go to Concord Theatricals (concordtheatricals.com) and learn about Simonelli’s three published plays.

“Heaven Help Me” is comic fantasy about a haunted beach house in Rockaway Beach, NY. “Men Are Dogs” is a comedy about single and divorced women in group therapy. “Dying For Theatre” is a comedy/mystery set in a small community theater in upstate New York where the actors are dying mysteriously.

With the consolidation of major publishers came the narrowing of plays they want to publish, he said.

“It’s a whole new generation,” he said. “They only have specific plays they want to do. I’ve had professional productions of plays, and I still can’t get them published. But I’m not complaining.”

That’s because Simonelli is using his business acumen to bypass publishers and promote his plays on Amazon Books. Essentially, he’s self-publishing, like authors who bypass book publishers and do that themselves.

He handled all of his negotiations with Broadway Palm.

“I acted for them (in December), and they knew me,” he said.

Simonelli uses an international email list of thousands of theaters, those who have produced his plays during the past 20+ years and those he wants to work with.

“Since I have a business background, I treat my plays as a business,” he said. “I will go far beyond what other playwrights do.”

He’s constantly prospecting for new business and new play ideas.

When theaters commit to producing his plays, he contacts them and commits to doing personal promos for them on social media. He often visits them in person for talkbacks about his plays.

“I treat them like my clients,” he said.

Once an audience member said his wife was worried about having European houseguests in their home.

That comment inspired Simonelli to write “Sicilians In The Basement.”