Robert Kya-Hill

Robert Kya-Hill ( Robert Hill; born December 4, 1930, Whitakers, North Carolina) is an American actor, director, playwright, musician, composer, and educator. He also performed under the name "Bob Hill". On learning that there was an actor with the same name, he briefly changed his name to Robert Hill II. He then added the prefix "Kya" after joining the Screen Actors Guild in 1961 because a union rule barred members from having the same name. Early years and education Kya-Hill's youth on farms in North Carolina and Virginia's Bible Belt country influenced his later works. 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 the silk screen industry and then attended City College of New York in 1950-51. Because he loved to sing but could not find a piano accompanist, he taught himself to play the guitar. He also went to music auditions for singing practice because he could not afford lessons. His 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 to 1957, 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. He also studied with private teachers including Herbert Gellendre, Vinettte Carroll and Carol Vikse. As his interests diversified, so did his mixed-media program credits, sometimes by choice and 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 as a 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 nightclubs in Manhattan, Connecticut, and New Jersey.