Ken Wydro Dies: ‘Mama, I Want To Sing’ Co-Creator & Producer Was 81

Ken Wydro, who co-created, co-wrote and produced the long-running 1983 Off Broadway hit musical Mama, I Want To Sing inspired by the life of 1960s “Just One Look” singer Doris Troy, died on Tuesday, January 21, at his home in Harlem, New York. He was 81 years old.

His death was announced by theater publicist Keith Sherman. A cause of death was not immediately available.

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Wydro, a producer of such Broadway productions as 1988’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone and, in 2008, a revival of David Mamet’s American Buffalo starring Cedric the Entertainer, John Leguizamo and Haley Joel Osment, will be best remembered for Mama, I Want To Sing (which he created with wife Vy Higginsen, the sister of Doris Troy). The long-running show made its Off Broadway debut at the historic Heckscher Theatre in 1983 and played 2,213 performances before closing in 1991.

In addition to subsequent revivals and world tours, the musical spawned two sequels (Mama, I Want To Sing Part II and Mama, I Want To Sing: The Whole Story) and a 2011 film adaptation starring Ciara, Lynn Whitfield, Patti LaBelle and Billy Zane.

In 1998, Wydro and Higginsen founded the Mama Foundation for the Arts with a mission to uplift the Black musical treasures of Gospel, jazz and R&B, and “to heal and inspire through the power of collective music-making.” Today, the Mama Foundation is an intergenerational and interracial Harlem institution.

For the Mama Foundation, Wydro co-created and directed several musicals performed in various theaters and churches in Harlem for decades.

The author of two plays, Secrets: The Untold Story Of Sigmund Freud And Carl Jung and Vice Versa, Wydro is survived by Higginsen, his wife of 44 years, and daughter Ahmaya Knoelle Higginson-Wydro.

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