Biography

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Ron Milner graduated from Detroit's Northeastern High School. He attended Highland Park Junior College, Detroit Institute of Technology, and Columbia University in New York. In the early 1960s, Milner received two prestigious literary grants, the John Hay Whitney Fellowship (1962) and a Rockefeller Fellowship (1965), to work on a novel, The Life of the Brothers Brown. Milner is one of the most significant figures to emerge from the Black Arts Movement. He is known affectionately as the “people's playwright” for his ongoing commitment to using Black theater for the advancement of Black people. Milner has taught widely and was writer in residence at Lincoln University (Pennsylvania) from 1966 to 1967, where his friendship with Langston Hughes, who urged him to use a personal voice in his writing, matured.

A “born writer,” Milner is a prolific playwright. His first major play, Who's Got His Own, premiered in Harlem in 1967. Milner went to New York with friend and producer-director Woodie King, Jr., as part of a touring production of three plays by Malcolm Boyd in 1964. He and King joined the American Place Theatre, where Who's Got His Own and The Warning: A Theme for Linda (1969, published in A Black Quartet: Four New Black Plays, 1970) were conceived and performed. Other published plays include The Monster (Drama Review, 1968), (M)Ego and the Green Ball of Freedom (Black World, 1968), and What the Wine-Sellers Buy (Samuel French, 1974). (Full bio)

Plays

Who's Got His Own (1966)

Who's Got His Own tells the drama of the Bronsons, a black, middle class household in Detroit, forced to confront family secrets after the father has died. (Source)

Cast Requirements: 6 (2f, 4m)

Characters: Clara Bronson, Tim Bronson, Jr., Mother Bronson, First Deacon, Reverend Calder, Second Deacon

Publication Info: Black Drama Anthology. Edited by Woodie King, Jr. and Ron Milner, Columbia University Press, 1971. (Link)

M(Ego) and the green ball of freedom (1968)

In this unique audio musical cacophony, voices moan in resignation, clamor in anticipation and reach for freedom.

Cast Requirement: Flexible

Characters: Voices

Publication: M(Ego) and the Green Ball of Freedom, Alexander Street Press* (Link)

The monster (1968)

The one-act play revolves around revolutionary students and their teacher. Summary forthcoming.

Cast Requirement: 6 (1f, 5m)

Characters: Ali, Jason, Rick, Mike, Helen, Dean

Publication Info: Black Arts: An Anthology of Black Creations. Edited by Ahmed Akinwole Alhamisi, Harun Kofi Wangara, Keorapetse Kgositsile. Detroit, Black Arts Publications, 1969. (Link)

The Monster, Alexander Street Press* (Link)

The Warning: A Theme for Linda (1969)

Linda is the second-youngest in a household of three generations of women. Her mother, Alma, is defeated at early middle age, having twice in her life sought happiness with men who fathered her three children and having lost; Linda’s grandmother is a woman of stronger fiber, but biter, long separated from her own husband, Alma’s father, and suspicious of all men because of her own experiences and the experiences of her daughter; Linda’s grandfather also is a defeated man, like so many black men of his generation, who turns to drink because of the pressures in the white world which would not let him live and function as a man. Linda is in love with Donald, a bright young man who wants to be a writer, and she spends much of her time at home fantasizing about Donald and their future together. Linda is teased and tormented by her old cousin Nora and by the never-ending cynicism of her grandmother. Linda wants to believe in Donald; she wants to believe that he can overcome the traps which destroyed her grandfather and which forced her own father to abandon her mother. In the two scenes which precede this excerpt from the long one-act play, Linda has been cleaning the house in anticipation of Donald’s visit, at the same time arguing with her cousin and grandmother, and daydreaming. One-act. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 5w, 2m

Characters: Linda, Nora, Joan, Grandfather, Grandmother, Mother, Donald

Publication Info: A Black Quartet. Edited by Ron Milner, Amiri Bata, Ed Bullins and Ben Caldwell. New York, New American Library, 1970. (Link)

what the wine sellers buy (1974)

Ron Milner’s What the Wine-Sellers Buy was produced by Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival in 1974. Even though Milner was one of the most prolific playwrights to come out of the Black Arts Movement, his play remains largely forgotten when compared to work by some of his contemporaries, such as Amiri Baraka or Ed Bullins. What the Wine-Sellers Buy, however, is a stunning rumination on growing up black and poor in U.S. cities during the 1950s and 1960s. He combines gritty realism, the music of his native Detroit, and conventions of medieval morality plays to craft his work. Faced with crippling poverty, a sick mother, and diminishing opportunities, teenage protagonist Steve turns to Rico, the devil on his shoulder, who seduces Steve into the world of flashy clothes, drugs, crime, and prostitution.

As Rico leads Steve further down a path of crime, Milner interrogates the buy-all, sell-all philosophy of American capitalism. Rico opines that “the only players in the game’s the one’s got the money and the goods to sell…The game is playing on” everyone else. Rico believes in an extreme form of consumerism. In Detroit and many cities in America during the 1950s and 1960s, pimps, drug dealers, and hustlers would do or sell anything to maintain their place in the game. Milner probes the boundaries of this consumerist ethic. One of Milner’s characters wonders “what the wine-sellers buy one-half so precious as what they sell?” Similarly, Milner investigates the complicated morality surrounding buying, selling, and borrowing more precious and esoteric items such as body, spirit, and soul. In Rico’s game, is the life you buy worth what you have to sell to get it?

Cast Requirement: 11+

Characters: Steve, Mrs. Carleton, Rico, Joe, Mae, Jim Aaron, Melvin, Old Bob, George, Mrs. Harris, Marilyn, Various male and female characters

Publication Info: What the Wine-Sellers Buy Plus Three: Four Plays by Ron Milner. Wayne State University Press, 2001. (Link)

What the Wine Sellers Buy, Alexander Street Press* (Link)

Season's Reasons: Just a Natural Change (1976)

The story of a young black militant of the 60s who has escaped from prison to return to the streets of 1975 and the drastically different political climate at hand. Seasons Reasons dramatically examines the changes in consciousness and activity which have altered the course of life in the black communities of America." A Capella Musical. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 10+

Characters: Lois, R.B., Penny Ante, Camille, Deacon, Minister, Calhoun, Randy, BO, Rev. Tee, ensemble

Publication Info: Seasons Reasons, Alexander Street Press* (Link)

Jazz-set (1980)

The highly innovative Jazz-Set is Milner's tribute to jazz - a play that works like a jazz composition, where the musicians and music are one and characters' life experiences and memories are "played" as music. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 6 (1f, 5m)

Characters: Pianist, Bassist, Drummer, Tenor, Alto, Trumpet

Publication Info: What the Wine-Wellers Buy Plus Three: Four Plays. Wayne State University Press, 2001. (Link)

don’t get god started (1987)

A series of skits depict problems that are cured by religion in this gospel musical. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 8+

Characters: Female Lead Vocalist, Wise Old Man, The Reverend, Claudette, Sister Needlove, Wise Old Woman, Jack, Silk, Sylvia, Barbara Ann, Male Lead Vocalist, Robert, Lawrence, Buzz 

Publication Info:  Don’t Get God Started, Alexander Street Press* (Link)  

Checkmates (1987)

Checkmates explores the relationships of two Black couples who are generations apart in age and attitudes - one new at the games and realities of love, the other experienced. (Source).

Cast Requirement: 4 (2f, 2m)

Characters: Sylvester Williams, Mattie Cooper, Frank Cooper, Laura McClellan-Williams

Publication Info: What the Wine-Sellers Buy Plus Three: Four Plays, Wayne State University Press, 2001. (Link)

Defending the Light (2000)

A young black man, William Freeman, has been arrested for a murderous rampage against whites, and his case becomes a high-profile political battle between state attorney general John Van Buren (son of Martin) and the abolitionist former governor William Henry Seward (later Lincoln’s secretary of state). The courtroom drama, based on Earl Conrad’s novel Mr. Seward for the Defense, takes place in 1846. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 30+

Characters: Mrs. Seward, Judge Whiting, Fuller, Van Buren, Sheriff, Reverand Austen, Freeman, Blatchford, Augustus, Morris, Mrs Freeman, Simpson, Holmes, Gray, and others

Publication Info: Defending the Light, Alexander Street Press* (Link)

Urban Transition[s]: Loose Blossoms (2002)

When the members of the Carter family are first introduced in Ron Milner’s “Urban Transition: Loose Blossoms,” they are enjoying a happy holiday in a new home. Unfortunately, negative influences from the old neighborhood have made the move with them. What results is a bittersweet story of trust, temptation, pride, and honor. (Source)

Cast Requirement: 7 (3f, 4m)

Characters: Earl, Cheryl, E.J., Gail, Sherrie, Eric, Bert

Publication Info: Urban Transitions, Alexander Street Press* (Link)

UNPUBLISHED

Crack Steppin' (1981)

A comic book operetta in rhythm & blues.

Cast Requirement: NA

Characters: NA

Publication Info: Unpublished manuscript available at the University of Michigan (Link)