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Henry D Miller

HENRY D MILLER

  (1943 - )
Nationality:    African American
email:    Click here to contact     Website:    n/a

Literary Agent:    n/a

Henry Miller (13 Apr 1943) is a Dramatist, Stage Director, Theatre Scholar, and veteran actor of the 1960s/70s black Theatre movement in the United States. He is the author of a number of award-winning African-American subject matter one-act plays. He's studied playwriting under the noted American dramatists Phillip Hayes Dean, Arthur Kopit, John Guare, and Terrence McNally. Miller has also written on Theatre for the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Museum in Philadelphia, the Opera Company of Philadelphia, the School District of Philadelphia, the Indianapolis Opera, Theatre Survey, and the African American Review. He has written on black film for the New York Village Voice, and his book, theorizing Black Theatre, was published (McFarland & Co.) in 2011; his lecture venues resulting from what some reviewers have called this seminal work include the Ralph Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA, the National Black Theatre Festival in North Carolina, and the University of Kansas. In addition to his Theatre writings, plays and essays, Miller has staged more than 35 Off-Off Broadway and regional Theatre productions, including his own plays and much of the African American canon; his most recent and critically acclaimed directorial outings (2012/13) was with Jeff Stetson's Fraternity, produced by the Ebony Repertory Theatre (ERT) of Los Angeles. His directing ventures in musical Theatre include George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward's opera Porgy and Bess for the Indianapolis Opera and the Opera Company of Philadelphia. More about Miller's work in the Theatre can be found online at the Arthur A. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a division of the New York Public Library in "the Henry Miller Theatre Collection."

Research:    Member of the Dramatists Guild of America (as at 2015)

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below is a list of Henry D Miller's plays - click on a Play Title for more information

         Death Of A Dunbar Girl         Gifts of Parting         Little Langston Plus Three, A         My Brother's Keeper         Unjust Do Not Prosper         Winter Reunion, A
Death Of A Dunbar Girl

Synopsis:
the final confrontation between an African-American mother and daughter that reveals the deep-seeded and repressed conflicts in their relationship: color consciousness, black liberation politics, and ultimately, the daughter's marriage to the white man that her mother loved and who managed her mother's former career as a singer and entertainer. the Dunbar Houses is an historic middle-class black Harlem, New York housing complex in which the character of the mother in . . . Dunbar Girl has lived for years.

Notes:
One Act Play with one set, which is now available only in the half-hour film adaptation of the same title, produced by Three Dimensional Films, Ltd. This version has three additional male characters, the daughter's chauffeur, her former lover and his seven year old son.

1st Produced:
Masque Theatre, New York     01 Mar 1975

Organisations:
Afro-American Repertory Theatre Company

1st Published:
the Black Drama Anthology, the Alexander Street Press (2002)   

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
One Act Drama

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Gifts of Parting

Synopsis:
Set against the background of an inner-city Christmas Eve, a charismatic and poli-tically ambitious Minister and leader of a city-wide influential Harlem church attempts to sustain an extra-marital love affair with his former church secretary.

Notes:
Gifts of Parting was the winner of an "Honorable Mention" Award in New York's Samuel French, Inc Short Play Festival and is the first companion play to A Winter Reunion in Miller's Christmas Eve Companion Plays.

1st Produced:
Clurman theatre
410 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036     Fall 1995

Organisations:
Theatre International, Inc.

1st Published:
-   

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Little Langston Plus Three, A

Synopsis:
Based at least partly on the writings of Langston Hughes

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Afro-American Repertory Theatre, NY     1975

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
-   

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
adaptation

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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My Brother's Keeper

Synopsis:
Lucas Newborne, a black retiring and divorced inner-city Police Detective is wounded and almost miraculously escapes death in a 1980s, South Bronx Crack Den shoot-out. This life-altering event raises for Lucas issues of potential black political celebrity, love, marriage, parenting, and sibling rivalry with his brother, the exiled leader of a former and once formidable American black nationalist organization.

Notes:
Full length Two-Act Play with two sets, and one male character is the Jewish Mayor of New York City.

1st Produced:
-    

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Alexander Street Press/Black Drama Anthology (2002)   

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama

Parts:
Male:  4            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Unjust Do Not Prosper

Synopsis:
An inner-city love affair between a young woman and young man proceeds apace despite the ever-present social and economic obstacles that are part of life in a black American ghetto.

Notes:
Full length musical drama; Book by Henry Miller. Music by Kenneth Mills and Lyrics by Herb Martin

1st Produced:
Harlem's I.S. 201 Theatre, New York     Fall 1974

Organisations:
the African American Repertory Theatre Company

1st Published:
-   

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Musical Drama

Parts:
Male:  6            Female:  4            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Winter Reunion, A

Synopsis:
Set against the background of a snowy Christmas Eve, A black Ivy League grandson struggles to achieve a perhaps life-saving reunion between his estranged, ghetto-wise, and on-the-run mother and her proper, "old school" church sexton father; the old man is also the young man's doting grandfather.

Notes:
One-Act play with one set. the second companion play to Gifts of Parting, the first play of Miller's Christmas Eve Companion Plays. One character, the Church Sexton, is in both plays.

1st Produced:
Clurman theatre
410 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036     Fall 1991

Organisations:
Theatre International, Inc.

1st Published:
Samuel French, Inc. (1992)   

Music:
-

To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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