The legacy of Lexington actress Alex Simpson

When visitors step inside the new home of the Lexington Theatre Company on Alexandria Drive, they may notice a silver-colored plaque on the wall with a sketch of a young lady smiling.

Below her picture on the plaque it proclaims, “The Alex Theatre, lovingly named in honor of Alexandra Hudson Simpson.” Past the plaque, doors lead to a new black box theatre with mirrors lining one wall, and a piano in one corner.

It’s quiet on this afternoon, but normally it’s full of performers rehearsing, laughing, and focusing on their craft.

Alex Simpson, a Lexington actress, would have been right in the middle of all the action because she loved the theatre and all the pieces that make it breathe.

Lyndy Franklin Smith is a co-founder (along with her husband Jeromy) and Artistic Director of the Lexington Theatre Company.

“Alex was a force and a light. She was as kind and wonderful and loving and giving, but she also was a hard worker. She wanted to be pushed. She wanted to be challenged. She always pushed herself to be excellent. She was so much fun. She loved, loved, loved theater. She loved everything about it. She loved being on stage, but she also loved the work. She loved being in the rehearsal room. She loved the craft. She loved being around the company.”

Alex’s mother, Melanie Simpson Conley, says her daughter caught the theatre bug at an early age, around four years old.

“At a young age, she just commanded your attention. Part of it was her quirky little personality. But she loved the stage, and it loved her right back. The stage was her escape from all of her health woes. I think she found it a way to be someone else. When she would play an actor or actress, it was an escape from her reality.”

The reality was a journey that no parent ever wants their child to endure. At thirteen, Alex was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive cancer called CIC-Dux 4. It’s a sarcoma where tumors form on different parts of the body.

Melanie says Alex had a tumor the size of an avocado on the back of her neck.

“It's just soul destroying to see how few kids, how short their life spans are with it, how quickly it comes back, how aggressive it is. But she beat the odds for a really long time, just not giving up and refusing to let it beat her.”

Melanie says Alex refused to be limited or defined by cancer. “She did her own research, and she asked the tough questions, as I told you earlier, she wasn’t scared of the truth, and she just wanted to know what the game plan was. So how do we beat this? What do we do? And she didn't like the word no. It was, you know, that was not acceptable. It's like, why? What are we going to do? And how do we move forward? And if this is what I have to do to beat it, this is what I'm going to do. These are the cards I, you know, was dealt in life, and I just have to play them.”

As she endured surgeries and chemotherapy Alex pursued her love of the theatre. She honed her skills at the School for the Creative and Performing Arts, known as SCAPA at Lexington’s Lafayette High School, and she sang and performed in musicals at Central Christian Church in Lexington.

Michael Rintamma, Musical Director, remembers Alex. “She was sharp as you would ever believe. I think she knew every line in the entire show and every lyric in the entire show, even as a very small kid, and she you could tell that there was an energy. She just beamed when she was on that stage and right here in the right here in our sanctuary, right on these steps.”

Alex had lost her father, Billy Simpson, to cancer when she was eight so from an early age she saw the cruel reality of cancer. From age 15 to 21 Alex’s cancer disappeared, and she used the opportunity to enjoy other passions of her life like butterflies, travel, adventures, and all things French, one of her majors at Dartmouth College.

Her mother says, “If there is a silver lining to pediatric cancer, and it may be every cancer, not just pediatric cancer, it's the fact that you live like there might not be a tomorrow, so you don't just get through the day. You make the most of today, in case there's not a tomorrow. And that's why we live so fast. We traveled as much as we could with her, you know, she, she was a foodie. Loved eating, you know, wherever she wanted to eat, we would try to get there and get in so she could sample their food. You know, we just tried to make the most of her life, whatever she had.”

At 21, the cancer reappeared, and despite more surgeries and treatments over ten months, Alex graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College with a double major in French and Psychology. Despite the protests of her doctors, Alex and her mother traveled to Africa after graduation.

“She was determined to go. Her goal was to see all seven continents, and at that point, we'd been to five, and Antarctica just was not gonna happen, you know, but she wanted to go to Africa. She was a photographer, and she wanted to take pictures of elephants and giraffes and zebras.”

At the end of that summer, two weeks before her 23rd birthday, Alex passed away. Her mother says two years later, Alex is always on her mind and in her heart.

“There is not a minute of the day that I don't think of her. And it could be as simple as a butterfly flying by, you know, in the backyard or at the arboretum or whatever. Or it could be a driver who drives like my daughter right there, drove like she drove. I mean, it can be that symbol, or it can be a song on the radio, but I can remember her singing, or somebody on television talking about musical theater, you know, it just there's so many triggers when you have that deep love.”

Before Alex passed, she and her mother set up the Alexandra Hudson Foundation from a trust left by her father. Melanie says she asked Alex to think of the trust like a pie that Alex could divide up and give out.

“I think Alex was mature enough and cultured enough to appreciate what she had, and she truly wanted other children to have that enrichment and that joy in their lives, especially if they had a setback, like an illness, right?”

Among many things that the foundation benefits, it helped build the “Simpson Theatre” at U-K’s Kentucky Children’s Hospital in Lexington.

After children and their parents check in at the hospital, they pass by a door and a wall of windows leading to the theatre. It’s brightly colored with a large mural featuring a smiling Alex in a fun pink dress.

She is standing on a bridge with a young child overlooking a river in Paris, France. The theatre room includes a table and chairs for art projects.

Jenny Decker is the Director of Philanthropy at the children’s hospital. “One of the things that Alex wanted for children was life to be normalized in the hospital as much as possible if children are admitted into the hospital, she wanted them to have opportunities on the inside of the walls that they sometimes were giving up outside.

Everything from theatrical performances to art activities to musical performances to maybe just hand massages, therapy, you name it.” Alex also wanted her church and its musical program to benefit. Central Christian Churches Musical Director says they’ve established an annual music program that will be held around Easter.

“The endowed legacy money pays for us to hire musicians to play. For that service, special soloists, if it calls for special soloists and just the materials. To buy the music that the choir would sing, and things like that as well.”

Alex’s foundation made a big impact on the Lexington Theatre Company and its new location.

Lyndy Franklin Smith says funding the new black box theatre was a breakthrough for the theatre company.

“So, it's this beautiful, beautiful, huge space, all black walls, so that when we convert it into performance space, it can feel like a theater. We have lots of plans. The Alex theater is going to grow. This is just the beginning. But what I love, and what I told Melanie as we were talking about this gift, one of our goals was to keep Alex's name on everyone's lips, and so the theater is called the Alex theater, or the Alex for short, and it is really such a beautiful thing, so heartwarming for me to just hear people who may not have even known Alex. You know, we tell her story.”

That story lives on through Alex’s foundation. Her mother says Alex would love the many ways she’s helping other people, especially children fighting cancer.

“I do think it gave her a peace of mind, knowing that if something did happen, that these organizations would receive gifts that can make a real difference, not just today, but down the road. For children, if you look at most of her gifts, they will touch children and help children have better quality of life, enrich their lives with theater, give them more educational opportunities, the church more spiritual outreach. So, I think that meant a lot to her.”

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