Associated Press
[Source: AP]
Ron Simons, an actor who turned into a formidable screen and stage producer, winning four Tony Awards and having several films selected at the Sundance Film Festival, has died. He was 63.
SimonSays Entertainment, his New York-based production company said Simons died Wednesday but gave no cause or other details.
“It is with heavy hearts that we share the unexpected passing of our beloved, blessed, and highly favored friend, Ronald Keith Simons,” the production company wrote in a statement on Facebook.
Simons won Tonys for producing “Porgy and Bess,” with Norm Lewis and Audra McDonald, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” starring Jefferson Mays, “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” with Sigourney Weaver, and “Jitney,” with John Douglas Thompson.
He also co-produced “Hughie,” with Forest Whitaker, “The Gin Game,” starring Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones, “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of The Temptations,” an all-Black production of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” the revival of “for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf” and the original work “Thoughts of a Colored Man.”
In 2022, after the first full season since the death of George Floyd reignited a conversation about race and representation in America, Simons was pleased to see Broadway offer one of its most diverse Tony slates yet.
