Bonny & Robyn welcome Jon Royal to the podcast for the final episode of Season One!

Jon Royal is a director, teaching artist, and facilitator who is based in Nashville, TN. In 2004 he received a fellowship to study with Ming Cho Lee and Constance Hoffman, forever changing his approach to art, work, and life. Since then, he has directed, or appeared in productions for In Other People’s Shoes, First Stage, Tennessee Performing Arts Center, Nashville Children’s Theatre, Nashville Repertory Theatre, Nashville Shakespeare Festival, Nashville Symphony Orchestra, Actor’s Bridge Ensemble, Street Theatre Company, Berry College, Nashville School of the Arts, and other organizations. In 2016, he was a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation’s National Observership Class, in which he had the privilege of working with Liesel Tommy on the Public Theatre’s production of Party People. In 2019 he was named Best Theatre Director by the Nashville Scene. Recently, he has begun working behind the camera, directing the concert documentary Walk Together Children: The 150th Anniversary of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, which has been distributed nationally by PBS, and producing The Creswell Story, a student driven film project that studies the history of Nashville’s Arts Middle Magnet School for the Performing Arts and its namesake. Jon has been working with youth and students of all ages for over thirty years. He’s currently on the faculty of Tennessee Governor’s School for the Arts where he teaches Devising Through Community Building. He’s also a part of a national design team that develops Shakespeare and Social Justice curriculum for high school classrooms around the country. He facilitates workshops for RACE FORWARD’s Government Alliance on Race and Equity cohorts, helping public servants engage with artistic practice to deepen their sense of collaboration in their work. Jon is currently the recipient of Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation’s Lloyd Richards New Futures Residency, where he is an artist in residence at St Louis Black Repertory Company.

Special thanks:

Berg (music)