Theatre & dance
Bruce Millan
?–2023 · theater founder, artistic director
Detroit-born co-founder of the Detroit Repertory Theatre (1957), whose 61 years as its artistic director and color-blind casting made him a pillar of Detroit theater.
- Died
- Detroit years
- 1928–2023
- Field
- Theatre & dance
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Millan grew up in Detroit as a gifted shortstop who signed a minor-league contract with the Chicago Cubs as a teenager, then served in the Army in Germany during the Korean War. At Wayne State University, where he studied the sociology of art, he and fellow student Barbara Busby, with Dee Andrus and friends, started a touring children's theater in 1957; Millan wrote its first production, The Invisible Indian Chief, with an interracial cast. After touring Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, the company settled in a converted building on Woodrow Wilson Street in the 1960s, added adult productions in 1967 and a New Playwrights Program in 1976. From the start Millan cast the best actor for each role regardless of race, a policy the Rep summed up as 'the power of diversity acting in unity'. He led the theater through the 1967 unrest and decades of disinvestment until 2018, one of the longest tenures of any American artistic director, and died in 2023 at 94.
Highlights
- Co-founded the Detroit Repertory Theatre in 1957 as a Wayne State student
- Artistic director for 61 years, until 2018
- Pioneered interracial, color-blind casting in Detroit
- The Rep is Michigan's longest-running professional nonprofit theater
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Founded · 1957–2018
Detroit Repertory Theatre
The 194-seat professional theater the company has occupied since the 1960s; still producing four shows a season.