Robert Kya-Hill

Robert Kya-Hill (born December 4, 1930) is an American actor, director, playwright, musician, composer, and educator. Born Robert Hill in Whitaker, North Carolina, he began performing in that name and as Bob Hill. On learning there was an actor with the same name, he briefly changed his name to Robert Hill II, but then instead prefixed Kya after joining the Screen Actors’ Guild in 1961 because a union rule barred members from having the same name.

Early Years and Education

His youth on farms in North Carolina and Virginia Bible-belt country led to later works influenced by religion. At the age of 12 he moved to Harlem in New York City with his mother, Fannie Williams Hill, a garment presser. After graduation as a silk screen major from the High School of Industrial Arts in 1948, he worked in silk screen and then attended the City College of New York 1950-51.

Because he loved to sing but could not find a piano accompanist, he taught himself to play guitar. He would also go to music auditions for singing practice because he could not afford lessons. Formal music studies were deferred until after Army service in Germany during the Korean War. He was discharged in 1953 with a National Defense Service Medal and an Army of Occupation Medal Germany.

From 1954-57 he studied at the New York College of Music and Jarahal School of Music in Harlem, where he conducted the Jarahal Concert Chorus for two seasons. At Jarahal, he also became an acting student and then protégé of the vaudeville performer, Lillyn Brown. Studies with private teachers included Herbert Gellendre, Vinettte Carroll and Carol Vikse. As his interests branched out, so did mixed media program credits, sometimes by choice, sometimes by budgetary constraints. In 1991 he earned an M.A in Theater Education from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont.

Professional career

Robert Kya-Hill’s extensive and diverse career began as a folk musician in 1958 with performances variously as guitarist, folk singer and concert soloist. He appeared in Let My People Go in New York’s Town Hall, with Lillyn Brown’s one-woman shows in Carnegie Recital Hall, and night clubs in Manhattan, Connecticut and New Jersey.

For several years he appeared as guitarist and actor, including as Gorman in Dark of the Moon, with James Earl Jones in 1959 at Equity Library Theater in Manhattan. He was billed as Robert Hill II when he appeared as Ketch and guitarist in the 1962 production of Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, East 11th Street Theater in New York City which starred James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson. His career transitioned to acting, composer, playwright, directing, then into teaching and back into acting and composing.

By intentionally auditioning for plays with no roles for blacks, he sought to broaden casting directors’ preconceptions and thereby increase employment for blacks. Although he was passed up for roles that way, he nevertheless appeared on stages in New York, regionally and abroad in more than 140 professional productions.

As Bob Hill, he played the lead in Dark Valley, Gospel Films, 1961, and was awarded the “Christian Oscar” by the National Evangelical Film Foundation for Best Actor of the Year. His role as Jericho in Slaves, produced by Theatre Guild Films in1969 and released by Walter Reade was praised as “excellent” by the Boston Herald Traveler. Terry Kay in The Atlanta Journal described him “a remarkably talented actor,” adding ”Kya-Hill is the finest actor in the cast, which includes Stephen Boyd, Ossie Davis and Dionne Warwick.” He reveals “a peculiar and magnificent fire, an unleashed freedom of acting ‘attack’ that breaks the conventions of characteristic posing too often committee by other performers.”

In 1969, his performance as Purlie in Purlie Victorious at the Equity Library Theatre in New York earned an Obie nomination as best actor. He performed the title role of Othello numerous times, including in Montreal, Vermont, New York City, and Perth, Australia. When cast as a last-minute replacement for Stephen Kumalo, the lead in Lost in the Stars, he learned the entire role and music in only three days before opening night. He has played leading roles in New York City, regional and international theatres. He also performed with touring companies, as Young Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., written by Alice Childress and Josef K, a dramatization by Andre Gide and Jean-Barrault of Kafka’s The Trial; and with repertory companies such as the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Connecticut.

His play, The Trial of Secundus Generation Blackman vs. Hannah and William Blackman was produced in June 1968 by Theater West in Dayton, Ohio. Writing in the Journal-Herald, Hubert Meeker expressed feeling “the excitement of the submerged Negro culture surfacing in new artistic shape, with the implication in this beginning trickle of a tremendous underground vitality that could break through and revolutionize the American stage.” The play was also performed at the Hunter College Playhouse in March 1972 with the shortened title, Blackman vs Blackman. It was directed by Kya-Hill and choreographed by Pearl Primus. Another play, The System, had also been submitted to Clarence Young, III in Dayton in 1968 and later widely performed without his knowledge or being credited. Its performance by Theatre West at the Lincoln Center Community/Street Festival in August 1972 prompted Mel Gussow in his favorable New York Times review to observe, “Although not individually credited in the program, Clarence Young, 3, a playwright, is apparently the man most responsible for the success of ‘The System’.” Other plays by Kya-Hill that were produced include Guilt the Touch of Death and Nat Turner: Slave.

Kya-Hill’s oratorio, The Gospel According to John and …, was premiered in a special performance at Rutgers Presbyterian Church, New York City, on May 19, 1968, with Elizabeth Mosher and Edmond Karlsrud among the soloists. He also composed the film score for Dark Valley and wrote music for his play, Revelation, for the Time is at Hand as well as numerous plays he directed or appeared in, among them J.B., Nat Turner, Moon on a Rainbow Shawl, The Ballad of Joe Smith, Yerma. His music for the 1968 production of Purlie Victorious at the Erie Playhouse in Erie, PA earned high praise in the Erie, PA Times on May 4, 1968: “This was the first ’non-musical’ this reviewer has seen where the audience went out humming the music from the show.”

He was director of the New York City Festival of the Arts in 1964, presented by the Afro-Arts Cultural Center and sponsored by several City agencies. Other credits include The Ballad of Joe Smith, Theater for Peace in New York City. It was reviewed as “masterfully staged by Robert Kya-Hill, who has seized all of the visual and physical implications” and his performance “by far the best in the play.” In 1974-75 at the McCree Theatre & Fine Arts Centre in Flint, Michigan he directed The Revelation of Jesus Christ…for the Time is at Hand, which he also wrote, composed music for, and narrated. The program contains his statement that since theater evolved from the church, why shouldn’t believers use theater to spread the Word…” for what is important is not popularity and security, but the salvation of souls.” In Perth, Australia, 1975–76, he directed several plays, including a dual cast student production of The Glass Menagerie at the Theatre-Go-Round and Wole Soyinka’s The Trials of Brother Jero at the Octagon Theatre with a cast from all over Africa. He also directed Abby Lincoln in The Gingerbread Lady at the Ebony Theater in Los Angeles.

As educator he created and taught the first Black Theater studies course at Hunter College, NYC in 1972-74 where he also taught acting in addition to performing and directing. He added playwriting in 1975-76 when he was appointed artist-in-residence at the Western Australian Institute of Technology (now Curtin University). From 1983-99 he taught drama subjects, English and music in New York City’s junior and senior high schools, as well as private acting and guitar. After retiring, he returned to the theatre. His work mainly focused on supporting the careers of aspiring actors, playwrights and filmmakers. He also continued composing music.

Personal

He married his wife Sally in 1966. They have one daughter, Bouqui.

Film /Television

Stage

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