Milan Dragicevich

Originally trained as a Shakespearean actor in a rigorous old-school conservatory, I've utilized my extensive performance background (Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Hartford Stage, Los Angeles Actors Theater) to fuel my passion for writing and storytelling. As an award-winning playwright, I pursue cutting-edge stories that reflect our fascinating, chaotic, mysterious, and mercurial world. Currently, as a professor of performance at UMass Amherst, I am jumping into the exciting visual medium of film/television and screenwriting, where I seek to create riveting human interest stories, using the language of cinema, with the aim to capture both edgy young audiences and those of an older generation who value the essential "simplicity" of a tale well told, with wondrous characters who earn our empathy and whom we want to follow through the straits of personal struggle and triumph. I am encouraged by the Academy's Nicholl Screenwriting competition where, years earlier, I was selected as a quarterfinalist after submitting my first-ever original screenplay, "Big Band." Sometimes it's the little affirmations that can make all the difference. Finally, I am the author of "The Persuasive Actor" (2019, Hackett Pub.), a daring approach to unleashing the spoken word on stage.