bio
"My work is rooted in the discipline and power of the classics, in classical structure, but placed in the service of vibrant, sizzling contemporary energy and application. As such, I am drawn to verbally adventurous works, contemporary and classical, seeing in their landscape an exciting opportunity for bold theatrical exploration, a bravery of vocal and emotional expression, a larger “scale” of performance."-Milan
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Milan Dragicevich is an actor/playwright/teacher who seeks a vibrant, arresting theater, where the persuasive force of the spoken word intersects with dynamic physicality and movement, live music, bold design, and a riveting story. He has performed with numerous nationally recognized regional theater companies, including the Hartford Stage, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and a ten-year stint with the Will Geer Theatricum in Los Angeles, where he earned a Los Angeles Drama-logue Critics Award for his portrayal of Richard III. More recently Milan has performed with the Northern New England Repertory Theatre Company in New London, NH, playing leading roles in Anna Christie, Hedda Gabler, and Arms and the Man. He played the lead role in Chris Perry’s sci-fi short film, SEED, featured at the Interfilm Berlin festival in 2015.
As a Professor of Performance at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, his teaching combines the discipline and power of the classics with contemporary energy and inquiry. His bold new book, The Persuasive Actor: Rhetorical Power on the Contemporary Stage, published by Hackett in March 2019, creatively adapts key tools from the forgotten vault of rhetoric, enabling today’s actor to send a thrilling “charge” into the spoken word—and performance. Milan also has a passionate interest in creating new work as an emerging playwright. His play, Refugee, a generational story of family fracture and displacement, received its premiere at UMass in December of 2016, remounted at the Shea Theater Arts Center in October of 2017, and subsequently produced at the "Joakim Interfest" international theater festival in Kragujevac, Serbia (October 2018). |
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Refugee, featured on New England Public Radio, included dynamic collaborations with Grammy-nominated composer Tim Eriksen and internationally acclaimed director Nikita Milivojevic. Milan’s award-winning play, Milosevic at The Hague, produced by the Serious Play! Theatre Ensemble, explores the shifting relationship between power and justice and was honored at the Joakim Interfest international theater festival in Serbia with a Special Jury Prize for theatrical innovation.
Milan’s influences include: his immigrant parents, powerful fables, Jimi Hendrix, Shakespeare, an upbringing in Los Angeles, Bernard Shaw, Eastern Orthodoxy, slam poetry, the blues, rhetoric, the Balkans, and his family.
“Theater works well when it surprises us, provides a new window onto a landscape obscured by Habit. The stage has its own ‘take’ on our world, quite distinct from the nightly news, where all things are pigeonholed in their proper place and all mystery erased. But the dramatic arena allows a startling freedom, where angels can lie and devils can (occasionally) speak the truth. Thus Theater takes us to another vantage point, where the world suddenly looks wondrously different.”—Milan Dragicevich
Milan’s influences include: his immigrant parents, powerful fables, Jimi Hendrix, Shakespeare, an upbringing in Los Angeles, Bernard Shaw, Eastern Orthodoxy, slam poetry, the blues, rhetoric, the Balkans, and his family.
“Theater works well when it surprises us, provides a new window onto a landscape obscured by Habit. The stage has its own ‘take’ on our world, quite distinct from the nightly news, where all things are pigeonholed in their proper place and all mystery erased. But the dramatic arena allows a startling freedom, where angels can lie and devils can (occasionally) speak the truth. Thus Theater takes us to another vantage point, where the world suddenly looks wondrously different.”—Milan Dragicevich