JON ROYAL (Director), is a director, teaching artist, and facilitator from Nashville, TN. He is excited to return to The Black Rep after directing last season’s production of Radio Golf, the touring show Takunda. In 2024 he was in residence at the company as The Stage Directors and Choreographers Foundation 's Lloyd Richards New Futures Resident Artist. He was named Best Theatre Director by the Nashville Scene for the 2019 season. In 2020 he received the Tennessee Arts Commission’s Individual Artist Fellowship. Regional directing credits include: Mufaro’s Beautiful Daughters, The Forgotten Girl (World Premiere), Fences, Pipeline, Topdog/Underdog, Smart People, Hannibal Lokumbei’s The Jonah People: A Legacy of Struggle and Triumph (World Premiere), Ghost (World Premiere), And In This Corner: Cassius Clay, Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Once On This Island, Twelfth Night, Hairspray, The Colored Museum, Passing Strange, Othello, and Citizen: An American Lyric. Jon recently directed the concert documentary Walk Together Children: The 150th Anniversary of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, which was distributed nationally by PBS.

MICHELE FRIEDMAN SILER (Costume Designer), is Resident Costume Designer for NJT.  Flyin’ West marks The Black Rep debut.  Michele has costumed many productions including The Wanderers, The Heidi Chronicles and Cabaret (St. Louis Circle Nominees), All My Sons, Into the Woods, and The Whipping Man. Other recent credits include An Orchard for Chekhov, Life is a Dream (St. Louis Theatre Circle Nominee), A Human Being Died That Night for Upstream Theater, The Rose Tattoo, The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire (St. Louis Circle Nominee) for the Tennessee Williams Festival, The Sound Inside (Moonstone Theatre), Hamlet, The Tempest, The Heir Apparent (St. Louis Theatre Circle Nominee) for St. Louis Shakespeare, Into the Breeches (St. Louis Theatre Circle Nominee) Shakespeare in the Streets: Winds of Change for the Shakespeare Festival of St. Louis, Blithe Spirit (St. Louis Theatre Circle Nominee) and Waiting for Godot for St. Louis Actors’ Studio. Michele was named “Best St. Louis Costume Designer” in the 2016 Post- Dispatch GO! List and was named a 2022 “Unsung Hero” by the St. Louis Jewish Light. Michele wishes to honor the memory of Gary Wayne Barker whose artistic integrity and kindness was a blessing to St. Louis theatre.

JOCELYN PADILLA (Intimacy Coach), is a St. Louis–based actress and certified Intimacy Coordinator whose work bridges performance and movement storytelling. She has choreographed staged intimacy and moments of heightened physical conflict for regional productions, prioritizing consent, safety, and emotionally grounded, repeatable choreography. Her intimacy credits include A Streetcar Named Desire for the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis and Meet Me at Dawn with Upstream Theater, among other local productions. As an actress, Jocelyn has performed with Upstream Theater and Chorus of Fools Theater Company, bringing vulnerability, strength, and dynamic ensemble presence to the stage. With a background in acting and directing, she approaches both performance and intimacy work with collaboration, professionalism, and care, and is committed to contributing meaningful theatre to the St. Louis community.