ROYANA BLACK
1977 - 2020
ACTRESS
FRIEND OF ANIMALS
We lost a dear friend and client yesterday, ROYANA BLACK as a complication from COVID-19. Royana was a force to be reckoned with. She started acting at 11 years old in the Broadway production of Neil Simon's "Brighton Beach Memoirs", which she did for over a year and never let her poor understudy go on. Since then, she continued to do off-Broadway and regional theatre, as well as plays in Los Angeles. One of her fondest memories was developing, workshopping and performing in the late Wendy Wasserstein's semi-autobiographical musical "Miami" (alongside Jane Krakowski and Fisher Stevens), where she played a young Wendy. The music was written by the famed Bruce Sussman and Jack Feldman and directed by the great Gerald Gutierrez.
Her television career began much later: at age 13. At 15, she starred as the title character in the CBS series "Raising Miranda", alongside on Bryan Cranston (Walter White pre-meth days) and James Naughton. She had been incredibly fortunate to have worked with (and learned from) many wonderful actors and directors. Royana took 4 precious years away from her career to get a B.A. in Victorian Literature from Yale University, which enabled her to speak fairly articulately at cocktail parties with pretentious Anglophiles; however, it had not offered her the fallback career a liberal arts education promises (at least in the brochures). Upon graduating, she packed up a U-Haul with two of her best friends, moved back to NYC and promptly founded her first non-profit theater company, producing three shows while working three full-time jobs.
Finally exhausted, she packed up her apartment and her cat Jules and moved to Los Angeles, where she's done guest stars and co-stars on television, a few films and as much theater as she could. She was the Artistic Director of the Alliance Repertory Company, which produces good, mostly original works all over town.
Royana is survived by her husband JP Hubbell, Jules the cat and Annie the dog, both rescues. As she states on her FB fan page, ‘She may be best known for getting Vanessa drunk on "The Cosby Show". ACUITY ARTISTS was proud to represent her and be her management. We extend our deepest condolences to her loving husband and family and all those friends and colleagues who knew and loved her. Though she is gone, she will never be forgotten.
She will be greatly missed.
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- ACUITY ARTISTS
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