- March 26, 2025
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For many years in the theater world, there was London's West End, Broadway and everybody else. Regional theater, even in bustling metropolises like Chicago and Los Angeles, was dismissed as second rate or a stop on the way to the Great White Way. Sarasota? A little speck on the map.
But Howard Millman changed that theatrical landscape. Millman, who died on Feb. 14 at age 93, rescued the Asolo Repertory Theatre, now Florida's largest Actors Equity theater, from the brink of financial disaster. He also helped inspire the creation of two other theater companies in town — Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe and the revival of Sarasota Jewish Theatre.
"Howard challenged the idea of what regional theater could be," says Michael Riedel, longtime theater critic for the New York Post, author and radio personality.
Millman, who also led theater companies in Rochester, New York, and Pittsburgh during his career, was part of a movement among regional theaters to become nonprofit and experimental, Riedel says.
"They weren't going to be tryout houses and or where Robert Goulet did 'Camelot' one more time," he says. "Instead, they were experimental. They did new plays and commissioned plays. It was a great moment."
Unfortunately, some of those regional theaters now face tough times after saddling themselves with high overhead by building expensive new facilities. Meanwhile, audiences in some areas didn't return to theaters after COVID lockdowns or grew weary of season subscriptions for lineups that were either too predictable or too edgy.
That hasn't been the case for Asolo Rep, which Millman led not once but twice. He was first managing director from 1968 to 1980 and then returned to the company, which was facing financial difficulties, if not ruin, as producing artistic director from 1995-2006.
On its Facebook page, Asolo Rep said that Millman pointed to the 1996 production of "The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby" as the show that tipped the scales in favor of the company's survival.
"But his understanding of the complexities of repertory theater, his deep ties to the Sarasota community, and his unwavering belief in the power of theater is ultimately what saved Asolo Rep. It is his shoulders we stand upon today."
When Millman retired from Asolo Rep in 2006, he left the company with a surplus of $800,000 and a healthy subscription base.
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Millman was first bitten by the theater bug as a child when his grandmother took him to the Yiddish theater.
His first appearance on stage came in "Faust" as an undergraduate at Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York, in 1949. Millman earned a bachelor's degree in theater from Hartwick, a master's from Purdue University, and was an "ABD" (all but dissertation) Ph.D. from Florida State University, where he finished his coursework in 1960.
After stints with the U.S. Army as both a soldier and a civilian, Millman first joined Asolo Rep in 1968. In addition to managing the company, he directed a dozen plays before leaving to become executive director of the Pittsburgh Public Theater in 1980.
The next step on Millman's theatrical road trip was Rochester's Geva theater, where he served as producing artistic director. During his tenure, he transformed the theater from a small storefront operation to a 500-seat facility that continues to prosper today.
It was at the Geva that the future critic Riedel caught the theater bug himself, at a production of Arthur Miller's "All My Sons," which he attended with his ninth grade English class.
When one of the actors had a stroke and couldn't perform, Millman stepped in to play the role of the father, Joe Keller. After the family learns that Keller had manufactured faulty airplane parts during World War II, where his pilot son Larry perished, he kills himself.
"I'll never forget it as long as I live," Riedel recalled during in interview in Sarasota, where his parents have a home. "I wasn't a theater person. I had never seen a straight play before. It transformed my life."
In the first act of "All My Sons," Millman read from a script but he went "off book" in the second because he knew that it was necessary to deliver a convincing performance.
Riedel later met Millman in Sarasota after a reading of Riedel's 2015 book, "Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway." That's when he learned that Millman had stayed up all night rehearsing the lines for the second act of "All My Sons." He was also able to tell Millman, "You changed the course of my life."
He wasn't alone. Millman encouraged educator and actor Nate Jacobs to found the now-thriving Westcoast Black Theatre Troupe in December 1999 to tell stories of the African-American experience. Jacobs was long on talent, but not as experienced with accounting and fundraising.
When WBTT was facing insolvency in 2009, Millman came to the rescue by brokering a meeting between Jacobs and banking executive Christine Jennings.
Jennings initially agreed to take on the job of WBTT consultant for six months to try to help the theater company, which didn't have a permanent home, was $150,000 in debt and was without financial management systems. She ended up becoming executive director and staying for five years, helping to set the stage for growth and the acquisition of its own performance and rehearsal space.
In previous interviews, Jacobs has referred to Millman as his "mentor." But in an emotional Facebook post on Feb. 15, Jacobs referred to Millman as his "theater father."
Wrote Jacobs: "He mentored me into the founder and director I am today, helped me secure our first executive director Christine Jennings and stood with me and our present executive Director Julie Leach, and watched over the future of WBTT until his last breath!"
Jacobs was one of several members of Sarasota's arts community who took to Facebook to express their grief upon Millman's death. They remembered him not just for his stewardship of Asolo Rep, but for his 25-year-plus love affair with his wife, Carolyn Michel, whom he met when she was performing at Asolo Rep.
Sarasota author Robert Plunket, the longtime gossip columnist for Sarasota Magazine and author, recalls that Michel and Millman were "just like teenagers" when they fell in love.
Recalls Plunket, who first became friends with Michel through fundraising for AIDS, "It was an office romance so they had to keep it quiet."
Plunket, known for being plain-spoken, said in an interview, "Howard was living in an awful condo near the Asolo because he wanted to be close to work. Then he met Carolyn. They were so well matched. Their interests and tastes were so in line with each other. They became one of the town’s power couples."
That power couple turned out to be instrumental in the revival of the Sarasota Jewish Theatre in 2021. SJT Artistic Director Carole Kleinberg wrote on Facebook, "It is with immense sadness that I say 'sleep well fair prince' to Howard Millman. Carolyn Michel and Howard shared a deep and abiding love for over 26 years."
Continued Kleinberg: "He was a pragmatic visionary and the architect of much of what is so glorious in our arts community. He shaped Asolo Rep, nurtured West Coast Black Theatre Troupe, supported and encouraged Sarasota Jewish Theatre. He changed my life. He changed Sarasota."
Kleinberg, a former professor of theater in the Chicago area and the former director of education and outreach at Asolo Rep, revived the Sarasota Jewish Theatre in 2021 with the guidance and support of Millman and Michel.
Michel is scheduled to appear in SJT's upcoming production of Neil Simon's "Lost in Yonkers," which runs from March 19-30.
According to Plunket, Michel had been weighing dropping out of the production because of Millman's declining health. "But Howard encouraged her to stay in the play. He said it would be good for her, good for the theater and good for audiences," Plunket said.
"She's still processing the loss," Plunket said of Michel. "Luckily, she has a big St. Louis family who has swooped in to help her. They are politically active, Jewish and arts-conscious. Howard fit right in with them."
Millman's paid obituary noted that he loved his family, including his son and daughter-in-law David and Paula Millman, his late daughter Devora Millman and granddaughter Jessica Millman.
"He loved his sister Barbara (deceased) and brother-in-law George Goldsmith and the Goldsmith nieces and nephews," the notice reads. "And he loved Carolyn Michel’s Hirsch/Lieberman family who embraced him as their own."
