Southern Fall/Winter 2022

ERICH
MCMILLAN-
MCCALL ’86
Erich McMillan-McCall has lived in New York
for 35 years. But that was never his plan.
He was performing in community theater in Birmingham and working
with James Hatcher ’43, founding director of Town and Gown Theatre
and director of 36 Miss Alabama pageants, when he was called to
Hatcher’s office one day.
“The gist of the conversation was, ‘You need to leave because there’s
nothing else for you to do here in Birmingham,’” he remembers. Hatcher
handed him a thousand-dollar check. Cherry Woods, Hatcher’s assistant,
gave him a one-way plane ticket to New York City.
“There were people in my corner who said ‘You need to expand your
wings. You need to be pushed out of the nest.’ That’s how I ended up in New
York City.”
He thought the move would be temporary.
“I thought if I found a summer job in New York City, that would be
enough for me,” he says. “But things just aligned. It was almost like the
universe conspired for me to end up in New York City.”
Birmingham, and Birmingham-Southern, had prepared him to find where
he belonged.
“I was the first person in my family to attend desegregated schools, and
that gave me a completely different outlook on the world,” he says. His
grandparents were one of the first Black families to integrate College Hills.
"In awe," McMillan-McCall passed Birmingham-Southern on his way to
Wilson Elementary.
“It seemed like Birmingham-Southern was always a place that I was
meant to be.”
He became the only male in the dance program, auditioning despite
having no ballet training. He gave himself a crash course in ballet by
reading all the library books he could over a three-day weekend.
“In five years in that program, I learned a lot about tenacity, and my
willingness to just be and to be present,” McMillan-McCall says. Ultimately,
those years taught him how to survive on his own timetable and how to
navigate New York City — including time as personal assistant to Vogue
creative director and editor-at-large André Leon Talley.
“I saw New York City as just another challenge. Doors opened for me where
they didn’t for others,” he says. “I think it’s always about being in the right place
at the right time and also being capable of doing what you say you can do.”
In 2008 he launched Project One Voice, an organization dedicated to
helping other Black artists gain equity. Over the last ten years, events
like One Play One Day have created diversity, equity, and inclusion by
celebrating under-appreciated Black plays and introducing New York
City’s “dominant producing culture to narratives they claim didn’t exist.”
“Once you belong in a place, you have equity, diversity, and inclusion.
I think my life has always been about finding that place where I fully
belong,” McMillan-McCall says. “As a kid and young college student, it was
sometimes difficult. So, Birmingham-Southern prepared me in ways that I
didn’t even think of when I got to New York City.”
FALL/WINTER 2022 / 41