Ron Simons, 1960–2024, left a career in tech to bring Black stories to the stage
Tony Award-winning storyteller Ron Simons died June 12 at the age of 63. A Broadway actor and producer, Simons staged works by and about people of color.
The path Ron Simons, ’01, took to becoming one of the most prominent producers on Broadway was not the one you’d expect. The Detroit native always wanted to act, but he left acting behind in college, majoring in English and information systems. He started his career as a software engineer, working at Hewlett-Packard, IntelliCorp and Microsoft.
While in Seattle, he earned an MFA in acting from the UW in 2001, and he was off to a career in the theater. After not being thrilled with the parts he landed, he turned his attention to producing movies and theater through his production company, Simonsays Entertainment.
He focused on bringing Black stories to the stage, winning four Tony Awards. Simons, who also earned a business degree, felt his experience as both an actor and in business would serve him particularly well as a producer and executive producer.
As he told DC Theater Arts in 2020, “I’ve found that many business-people can handle the question of financial viability but can’t judge a good story, so as an artist, I also have that area of expertise. Plus, even if it’s a good story, it has to be crafted to take it to the stage, so the leadership must understand how to get it there.”
His fourth Tony Award was for a revival of the August Wilson play “Jitney,” which centered on a small taxi company in a Black Pittsburgh neighborhood. That play was one of Wilson’s 10 works about the Black experience in the 20th century.
“In these political times, it is so, so important to share works of diverse voices,” Simons said in a 2017 interview with WAMC-FM in Albany, New York. “It’s really, really, really key that we uphold and promote and give voice to these diverse voices who are under siege right now … [or] who are ignored by mainstream entertainment and arts organizations.”
Simons, who also was a major supporter of the UW, died June 12 at the age of 63.