With this newsletter, we want to introduce our readers to friends of NHP, not just in New Harmony, but throughout our community. This month's feature focuses on a friend in Indianapolis, and we'll be moving around the country throughout the year.
Meet Alaine Simms, Actor and founder of Miss Alaineous Performances
I grew up in the rolling hills of southern Indiana, in Corydon, the state’s first capital. Although I lived less than two hours from New Harmony, my childhood travels rarely took me any closer than Holiday World in Santa Claus, Indiana.
I come from a family of readers. My maternal grandmother was an elementary school teacher, and her classroom and the school’s media center with its book collection were my playgrounds after school for years. My mother worked as a reporter before becoming a stay-at-home parent, then a children’s librarian, and eventually the director of our county’s public library. Between them, they helped foster my lifelong love of books, stories, and the people who share them.
I studied both Theatre & Drama and Communications at Indiana University Bloomington but, after graduation, I panicked at the prospect of pursuing the arts professionally and joined Teach For America instead. I moved to Indianapolis, where I spent nine years teaching, earned my Master of Arts in Teaching from Marian University, and pursued another passion: working to make the world a better place through education and civic engagement.
After my oldest daughter was born, I left the classroom to stay home with my children. Teaching was deeply meaningful and I adored working with children, but it was also all-consuming. Eventually, I began finding my way back to theatre, initially doing one community theatre production a year before gradually auditioning for more opportunities around Indianapolis. Now I perform in four or more productions annually, primarily with semi-professional companies, and hope to pursue acting full-time when my youngest daughter starts kindergarten.
Along the way, I discovered that I love supporting theatre almost as much as I love making it. I’m the person who wants to attend everyone’s shows, cheer on my friends, and help audiences discover the work happening in their own communities. When I realized there was no single, comprehensive place to find local auditions and performances, I created Miss Alaineous Performances. Through its Facebook page and public Google Calendar, I track opportunities and productions from roughly 150 theatre companies and venues within a two-hour radius of Indianapolis, sharing monthly roundups and helping connect artists and audiences.
Whether I’m onstage, in the audience, or helping someone discover their next favorite production, I believe stories bring people together. I’m grateful to have found so many ways to be part of that process.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
As a theoretically recovering perfectionist, I think pursuing perfection can be a little dangerous. Sometimes we’re so busy trying to have it all or make everything just right that we forget to appreciate the good things already surrounding us. I’m not sure perfect happiness is a destination so much as a collection of moments when we’re fully present in our own lives.
For me, those moments might mean being completely immersed in play with my daughters, feeling connected to a character and my fellow actors onstage, or swimming underwater in that beautiful, muffled silence. They might mean climbing a tree, getting lost in a good book, hiking or kayaking somewhere beautiful, or exploring a new city.
I find happiness in compelling performances, digging into a script on my own and in rehearsal, sharing food and meaningful conversation with old friends or new acquaintances, and experiencing the occasional adventure that gets my adrenaline going. I love public libraries, traveling, and ice cream at practically any place and time. I find joy in working toward a better community, too, because I want to help build a world where we can all live freely and without fear.
And some of the happiest moments come from feeling truly seen and understood— and being able to offer that same feeling to someone else. I’m grateful for the ability to move my body in ways I enjoy, to spend time outdoors, and to keep discovering new things. I think the closest thing to perfect happiness is being present enough to recognize how much there is to love in the life we’re living, moment to moment.
Which living person(s) do you most admire?
I find it challenging to select a handful of people, because I admire so many different kinds of courage and goodness (plus I’m both indecisive and loquacious, a trend you’ll notice across all my answers). Teachers and librarians. Public servants who work to make their communities better. Journalists willing to uncover the truth even when doing so comes at a personal cost. Public health professionals who ground their work in evidence and medical expertise. Artists who continue to create in a difficult world. Anti-racists working to dismantle oppression and prejudice. And people who have survived trauma and keep putting one foot in front of the other, even when healing is slow and rarely a straight line.
I also admire children. I volunteer in my daughters’ classrooms whenever I can, and I’m continually reminded how much we have to learn from them. Before the world teaches them to temper their enthusiasm, doubt themselves, or view other people with suspicion, children can approach life with marvelous curiosity, confidence, and openness. I hope we can do a better job of protecting those qualities rather than extinguishing them.
In these particularly difficult times, I also appreciate historians and writers such as Heather Cox Richardson, who help people understand the present by placing it in historical context. I believe an informed public is essential to a functioning democracy, and I admire those willing to do the work of helping us understand not only what is happening, but how we got here.
Who are your favorite writers?
As a lifelong reader— the granddaughter of teachers, daughter of a reporter and librarian, sister to an author, and member of three simultaneous book clubs— this is an almost impossibly difficult question. My loved ones will tell you that I can never choose anything, so narrowing down my favorite writers is a particularly cruel exercise!
Libraries have always been a second home to me. Growing up, I spent weekday afternoons there while my mother worked. In college, I camped out in libraries to study, work, and find a little peace. Now I’m fostering a love of reading in my own daughters, both of whom are named after literary heroines (Alanna, the heroine from Tamora Pierce’s The Song of the Lioness series, and Lyra, the heroine of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials saga). Books have been a constant in my life, and I’ve never been particularly interested in sticking to one genre.
Some of my favorite authors, new and old, include Jane Austen, J.M. Barrie, Pierce Brown, Diana Gabaldon, William Goldman, Madeline Miller, Anne Rice, Brandon Sanderson, Tamora Pierce, Philip Pullman, J.R.R. Tolkien, Andy Weir, and Oscar Wilde. I love immersive worlds, complicated characters, mythology, speculative fiction, and stories that make me see the world— or the people in it— a little differently. I’m drawn to writers who can make me feel as though I’ve stepped into another world while somehow helping me understand our own a little better.
My love of stories extends just as strongly to the stage. Some of the playwrights whose work I particularly enjoy include Anton Chekhov, August Wilson, David Lindsay-Abaire, Duncan Macmillan, John Patrick Shanley, Kate Hamill, Lauren Gunderson, Lynn Nottage, Sarah Ruhl, Tracy Letts, and (of course) William Shakespeare.
But I’m not someone who needs to arrive at the theatre already knowing or loving the script. I love a well-directed, beautifully designed, thoughtfully acted, thought-provoking production— and I especially love discovering new work. There’s nothing quite like encountering a story for the first time and leaving the theatre still thinking about it.
I also have a particular affection for the work of local playwrights, including (but not limited to!) Jennifer Blackmer, Tom Horan, Bennett Ayres, Ben Asaykwee, Paige Scott, Lou Harry, Andrew Kramer, Marcia Eppich-Harris, Casey Ross, Andrew Black, Laura Town, Mary Karty, Ian Hauer, Amalia Howard, Becky Schlomann, and Charlie Weimer. Being part of the Central Indiana theatre community means I get to discover new stories close to home and support the people bringing them into the world.
Ultimately, I adore stories of all kinds. Give me a book that swallows me whole, a play that challenges my assumptions, a production that makes me see familiar material in a new way, or a completely new story I didn’t know I needed. I’m always happy to discover what comes next.
Who are your heroes in real life?
My mother and my grandmother are two of my greatest heroes, although I’m certain neither would ever describe herself that way.
My mother returned to school one class at a time to earn her master’s degree in library science while working full-time as a children’s librarian and raising me and my two younger siblings. She was an incredibly present and supportive mother, chauffeuring us around to our many extracurricular and social commitments, cheering us on, and helping us with whatever we needed. She went on to become the director of our county’s public library, where she continued working to make our community better. It was my mother who showed me that caring for people and pursuing meaningful work aren’t competing priorities, even when balancing them takes tremendous effort.
My grandmother was an elementary school teacher and, since retiring, has volunteered with numerous organizations and served on local boards. She is also a steadfast voice of liberal reason and compassion in a deeply conservative small town, as was my grandfather before he passed away. They taught me, by example, that you can stand by your principles without losing your compassion for the people around you.
I think of them as heroes not because they were perfect, but because of how they lived: showing up, doing the work, standing up for what mattered, and caring for people along the way. They helped shape the person I am, and I hope I’m carrying some of those lessons forward in the way I raise my daughters and contribute to my community.
Judy O’Bannon, a longtime family friend on my mother’s side, is another hero of mine. Her work in education, the arts, historic preservation, and community development has made a lasting difference in Indiana. As Indiana’s First Lady, she used her position to support literacy and showcase Indiana artists, among many other efforts, and she has continued that community work in the years since. But I also admire the way she remains personally engaged with the people around her. She has come to see me perform, and once, when I was working as a lifeguard at an event as a teenager, she offered to relieve me for a break because she’d been a lifeguard herself. She has accomplished extraordinary things without losing sight of the ordinary human interactions that matter, too.
What does the New Harmony Project mean to you?
I’m relatively new to the New Harmony Project, and I’m still discovering the breadth of its impact. My introduction came in 2024, when I was diving headlong into the Indianapolis theatre scene, both as an actor and as an audience member. While rehearsing for a production of Seeking Nietzsche by local playwright Marcia Eppich-Harris, I learned about PlayFest Indy. As a stay-at-home parent without an income of my own, the opportunity to experience staged readings of new plays for a pay-what-you-can donation (or even for free) felt like a dream come true.
I managed to attend five of the eight readings that first year, and I’ve since been able to attend every reading in the 2025–2026 season of what is now New Plays Indy. I plan to attend the entire 2026–2027 season, too. I feel incredibly fortunate to get a glimpse of a play in its early stages, when it is still taking shape. There’s something special about being in a room with a playwright and other audience members, experiencing a new story together and having the opportunity to contribute reactions, questions, and feedback that might help that story grow.
The more I learn about the New Harmony Project, the more I understand that its impact extends far beyond the readings I attend. NHP nurtures and supports writers, prioritizes equity and authentic connection, and recognizes the power of stories to change the world. I deeply appreciate its commitment to justice and antiracism, including its willingness to hold itself accountable to those values. Supporting underrepresented voices is essential, particularly at a time when opportunities for diverse artists and stories face increasing threats.
I’m grateful that NHP makes it possible for people like me to encounter new work that we might otherwise never have the opportunity to experience. I’m equally grateful that it creates space for playwrights to develop that work and for audiences to be part of the process. I’m still learning about the organization’s history and the many artists whose careers it has helped shape, but I already know that the theatre community and the stories we get to hear are richer because of its work.
To me, the New Harmony Project represents what the arts can be at their best: a commitment to listening, to making room for voices that have too often been excluded, and to imagining a world that is more just, more compassionate, and more connected than the one we have today.
