Rhett Owen is a Georgia native who now calls New York City home. He graduated from Stanford Law and did a stint at a big law firm before hightailing it out of there to study acting at the William Esper Studio, followed by acting and directing with the legendary Wynn Handman (now in his 68th year of teaching and still going strong). Rhett produced the sold-out run of, and played a lead role alongside Michael Rabe in, the world premier of Rabe's The Future Is Not What It Was, which garnered two New York Innovative Theatre Award nominations. Rhett has since written, directed, produced, and acted in numerous comedy shorts; he's currently developing a half-hour comedy about death, The Ashes, which he wrote and which was a semi-finalist for the 2018 Sundance Episodic Story Lab. Rhett also worked on the feature documentaries Documented, by Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, filmmaker, and activist Jose Antonio Vargas, and Raga Revelry: A Journey Through North India Classical Music. The initial idea for BLACKER, like most of his worthwhile ideas, came to him in meditation.

Catch him on Instagram:  @rhettoricalquestions

Eric Lockley is an award-winning actor, writer, comedian, producer, and a founder and artistic leader of The Movement Theatre Company and the Obie award-winning Harlem9. As an actor, Eric has been featured in works by some of our most prolific playwrights - Marcus Gardley, Idris Goodwin, and Tarell Alvin McCraney - and in programs on BET, MTV, HBO, and Netflix. Recent screen credits include First Reformed, starring Ethan Hawke, and a role in Season 2 of Luke Cage. With a passion for #blackboyjoy, Eric wrote, produced, and starred in a short film, The Jump, which won a number of Best Short audience awards and is now available on Amazon.com. Eric is a weekly performer at The People’s Improv Theater on the House Team, “Elevator Talk”.  His plays Blacken the Bubble (Harlem School of the Arts) and Last Laugh (La MaMa E.T.C.) examine the “performance” of race, while his solo show, Asking For More (Apollo Theater), examines diet and fitness habits in urban communities. Insistent that humor is a valuable tool in creating change, Eric is developing new projects for the screen, including a dark comedy examining police brutality. 

Stay connected: iamericlockley.co