Bob Devin Jones

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Bob Devin Jones (born 1954) is an American playwright, director, and actor. His work often focuses on civil rights and social justice.

He was born in Los Angeles and grew up in Southern California. He studied acting at Loyola Marymount University, did graduate work at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, and studied abroad at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. After college, he traveled the country as an actor and director, with Los Angeles as his home base most of the time.

Jones began writing plays in 1991. He spent eight months in Ashmont working with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, then lived in Seattle for two years. He first visited St. Petersburg in 1997 to direct a Harlem Renaissance version of Miss Julie. There he met his life partner, Jim, and decided to settle in the area.

He makes his living as an actor, a director, and the artistic director of The Studio@620. He mentors young directors, writers, and visual artists and also runs a chocolate chip cookie baking business.

Jones has written more than a dozen plays. His first major work, Uncle Bends: a Home-cooked Negro Narrative, began development in 1991 at a New Works Festival in Los Angeles. It premiered in 1995 in Sacramento and has since been staged in Ireland, New York City, the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, and other cities. The play uses food as a metaphor and satirizes racial stereotypes while showing the resilience of African Americans through history, including the impact of beatings and lynching.

In 2001 he wrote Manhattan Casino, a musical about a St. Petersburg music hall that was a center for Black culture, where famous musicians like Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie played.

Jones’s plays have been produced at American Stage and LiveArts Peninsula Foundation. He has directed productions around the country, including The Black Nativity, Smokey Joe's Café, and Gem of the Ocean.

In 2004 he and friend David Ellis founded The Studio@620. The studio aims to be a welcoming place for art, heritage, history, song, theater, literature, moving pictures, and dance. It invites all members of the community to display their art. Events at the studio have included a reading by Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, a night with historian John Hope Franklin, annual Shakespeare productions, and displays by the Florida Highwaymen. The studio has been recognized by the New York Times and has won local arts awards.