Franklin & Marshall College

Jonathan Miller, acclaimed theater and opera director, physician and author, will visit the Franklin & Marshall campus on March 31-April 1 for two public presentations.

The first, An Evening with Jonathan Miller, will take place on Monday, March 31 at 7:30 p.m. in the Green Room Theatre. The event is free and open to the public, however seating is limited and early arrival is advised. This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Liberal Arts and Society, the Ware College House and the Bonchek Institute for Reason and Science in a Liberal Democracy.

The second event, the College's annual Bonchek Lecture, will take place on Tuesday, April 1 at 7:30 p.m. in the Ann and Richard Barshinger Center for the Musical Arts. The event is free and open to the public, however tickets are required and can be picked up at the College's box office located in the lobby of the Roschel Performing Arts Center.

The Bonchek Institute for Reason and Science in a Liberal Democracy seeks to foster an appreciation of the importance of reason, skepticism, and the scientific method in maintaining a liberal democracy--which means, briefly, one in which the individuals liberties are protected from a tyranny of the majority.

Miller's career has covered many different fields: author, lecturer, television producer and presenter, theatre, opera and film director.

Born in London, the son of a distinguished child psychiatrist, he was educated at St. Paul's School, read natural sciences at St John's College, Cambridge and qualified as a doctor of medicine in 1959.

While at university, Miller appeared as a member of the Cambridge Footlights and subsequently accepted an invitation to co-author and appear in "Beyond the Fringe" with Alan Bennett, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. This now-legendary satirical review opened at the Edinburgh Festival in 1960 and later transferred to London and New York.

Thereafter, Miller's career has been inextricably linked with the stage and he has directed many memorable productions--The Merchant of Venice with Sir Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright, The Taming of the Shrew (RSC), The Seagull (Chichester Festival Theatre), A Long Day's Journey Into Night (Haymarket Theatre) and The Emperor (Royal Court).

Between January 1988 and October 1990, as artistic Director of the Old Vic, Miller directed a number of highly acclaimed productions including Andromache with Janet Suzman, The Tempest with Max von Sydow, King Lear and Corneille's comedy The Liar. More recent productions in London include A Midsummer Night's Dream (Almeida Theatre), The Beggar's Opera for Broomhill Opera, and Camera Obscura, again for the Almeida Theatre, and also King Lear at the Lincoln Center, New York. He has most recently had a huge success with Chekovs The Cherry Orchard at The Crucible, Sheffield.

Miller's involvement in the world of opera began when he was invited to direct the British premiere in 1974 of Arden Must Die by Alexander Goehr. He spent several seasons working closely with Kent Opera, and subsequently with English National Opera for which he directed some of his most enduring successes--The Marriage of Figaro, The Turn of the Screw, Rosenkavalier, Carmen, and The Mikado and Rigoletto, both of which have been revived in 2006.

He has also worked at many of the worlds leading opera houses--the Maggio Musicale, Florence; La Scala, Milan; Metropolitan Opera, New York; Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin; Bayerische Staatsopera; Vienna Staatsoper; Salzburg Festival and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Recently he has directed productions in Florence, Stockholm, London, Tokyo, and at the Mostly Mozart Festival in New York.

For more than 30 years, Miller has contributed prolifically to the BBC and independent television. His 1966 film of Alice in Wonderland is regarded as being one of his greatest achievements. Between 1980-82 he produced and directed 11 plays for the BBCs prestigious Shakespeare series, in 1984, The Beggar's Opera and in 1985, Cosi fan tutte. His semi-staged performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, which was given in London in 1993, and then in Spain and New York, was also filmed for BBC2.

Television has allowed Miller to explore aspects of his first career as doctor and neurologist. He has written and presented several major series such as The Body in Question, States of Mind, Who Cares, Born Talking, Museums of Madness, Anthropology and more recently, Opera Works. His latest series for the BBC, A Brief History of Disbelief, was broadcast in the autumn of 2004 and was repeated on BBC2 soon after. In 2005 he made a five-part series for BBC Radio 4 titled Self-made Things.

Miller is a frequent lecturer on a wide variety of subjects. He gave a series of talks at the National Gallery titled "From the Look of Things" which he subsequently delivered at the Metropolitan Museum in New York and at the Arts Institute of Chicago. He returns to the USA each year as a guest lecturer.

In September 1998, Miller was curator of a major exhibition at the National Gallery, London titled "Mirror Image," which explored the pictorial representation of reflection. The following autumn, Mitchell Beazley published a book of his photographs and extracts from his notebooks, Nowhere in Particular.

Miller was awarded the honorary title Doctor of Letters by Cambridge University and in 1997, was elected as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London. In 1998 he was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh. He is also a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In June 2002, he was knighted in The Queen's Jubilee Birthday Honours List.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: MARCY DUBROFF (717) 291-3837
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