I am a playwright, screenwriter, actor and teacher based in New York City. I also coach executives in the public, private and nonprofit sectors on leadership, communication, and creativity.
I began my professional life as an actor. I took an extended break from the business to get my law degree at UNC-Chapel Hill, where I went on to practice law for seven years, taking on clients (as the judges used to joke), “whose houses had wheels but whose cars did not.” I slowly began making my way back into more creative endeavors, first as an arts advocate and nonprofit fundraiser, now primarily as a writer and consultant.
In my work with business and nonprofit leaders, I have designed and delivered communications, leadership, sales and management training programs for clients in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Asia. I have worked with a wide variety of corporate, government and nonprofit clients in the accounting, consulting, banking, manufacturing, transportation, energy, technology, legal, and energy sectors, among others. Learn more about my work in this field.
Education: MFA in Dramatic Writing, NYU/Tisch; JD, University of North Carolina School of Law; BFA in Theatre Performance, University of Mississippi.
I began my professional life as a stage and film actor before attending law school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I practiced law for seven years before moving into the nonprofit sector, providing executive leadership to arts, human services and environmental organizations from New York to Oregon. Alongside my work as facilitator and coach, Terry has taught performing arts management at the University of North Carolina and the North Carolina School of the Arts. He holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, a JD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a BFA in Theatre Performance from the University of Mississippi, and trained at the Atlantic Theater Company Acting School in New York.
Read more about my plays here.
My screenplay The Fiddle Player, loosely inspired by my dad’s childhood as a sharecropper in Mississippi, is a second round selection for the January, 2017 Sundance Screenwriters Lab. I’ve also written two original television pilots, OMG and Lawyers in Love. OMG is a half-hour dramedy about Jamie, a magical Jesus twink straddling the jagged line between gay life and ordained ministry in New York City. Lawyers in Love is an hour-long drama with jokes, about two law school classmates who open a practice together in a small college town in North Carolina (where did I get that idea…?) defending the rights of the poor and disenfranchised.
My acting credits include appearances in New York in the premieres of Fast, Light and Brilliant and After Ben Alderidge, both at Emerging Artists Theatre, and on the Onion News Network’s web series Today Now. I’ve also appeared regionally with Burning Coal Theatre (Raleigh, NC); Profile Theatre (Portland, OR); the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and others. I assisted Rebecca Holderness on James Joyce’s The Dead at Burning Coal, and also served as AD for a staged reading of Arthur Miller’s The American Clock at Profile in Portland. I served as Executive Director for the North Carolina Theatre Conference and taught arts management at both the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and The North Carolina School of the Arts. I am a member of the Dramatists Guild, SAG-AFTRA and Actors Equity Association.
Education: MFA in Dramatic Writing, NYU/Tisch; JD, University of North Carolina School of Law; BFA in Theatre Performance, University of Mississippi.
Terry Milner writes plays and screenplays. 