[2][3] The city of Johannesburg and its denizens, shaped by diverse racial and gender identities as well as by South Africa's politics, provided the core inspiration for his writing and directing work.
[2] Back in South Africa in the early 1970s, Simon applied his dual interests in theatre and social activism to work in rural health education, creating scenarios for role-play to help black nurses better understand their patients.
[6] in Johannesburg, he staged multi-racial plays anywhere he could, in warehouses and shantytowns, storefronts and back yards, but in 1974, Simon and his collaborator Mannie Manim, who was working for the government-sponsored Performing Arts Council of the Transvaal, founded The Company gained access to PACT's experimental Arena Stage, housed in an old school building, where they put on South African adaptations of classical plays, such as Georg Büchner's Woyzeck and Sophocles' Antigone.
[9] These included controversial dramatizations in response to violent state repression of politics, such as Black Dog (1984), about the Soweto Uprisings of 1976, and Born in the RSA (1985), about the crackdown during the State of Emergency in 1985, but also more subtle treatments of social conflict, such as the exploration of the struggles of South African women in the play Call Me Woman (1979), which the cast developed after the Market was unable to secure production rights for Ntozake Shange's play For Colored Girls who have considered suicide.
Simon's last production The Suit (Market Theatre 1993), was adapted from a short story of the same name by Can Themba, but fleshed out the characters by drawing on English and South African vernacular dialog developed by the original cast.