Jonathan Miller selected as McCormack Artist-Scholar

Jonathan Miller, the multi-talented British physician, author, and director who first made his mark in the 1960s with the hit Beyond the Fringe, will be in residence at Skidmore April 3?9 as the College?s McCormack Visiting Artist-Scholar for spring 2008.

Distinguished by his wide-ranging intellectual curiosity and droll wit, Miller has been internationally acclaimed for his mastery of a multidisciplinary array of interests that encompass drama, music, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, film, photography, and the visual arts. The art and culture critic Michael Kimmelman once described Miller as ?the preeminent polymath,? and Independent magazine pronounced him ?always a hot ticket? a star, a flamboyant intellectual performer making wild connections that leave his listeners wild-eyed and wondering.?

During the McCormack residency, Miller will work with Skidmore students and faculty and will also appear in three free public events. His lecture, ?Laughing Matters: Humor and Comedy,? will begin at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 3, in Davis Auditorium, Palamountain Hall. A panel discussion on ?Film and the Imagination,? beginning at 7:30 p.m. Monday, April 7, in Davis Auditorium, will feature Miller in discussion with Skidmore faculty Thomas Lewis , professor of English; Erica Bastress-Dukehart, assistant professor of history; Marc-Andr Weisman, associate professor of French; and student Sean Mattison, a member of the Class of ?08. A conversation with Jonathan Miller featuring Lary Opitz, professor of theater, and Sheldon Solomon, professor of psychology, will begin at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 8, in the Payne Presentation Room of the Tang Museum on campus. Receptions will follow all three events.

Miller, who has been described by the New York Times as ?the cognitive psychologist and genius of British stage and opera,? says that he likes to ?dislocate things slightly so that people look at a work anew.? Born and educated in London, he performed with the university drama club and the Cambridge Footlights while studying natural sciences and medicine at the University of Cambridge and University College London.

After attaining his degree, Miller practiced medicine for two years but it was his university theatrics that led him to join fellow writer/performers Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, and Alan Bennett in creating Beyond the Fringe. The wildly popular 1960 satirical revue stretched the boundaries of comedy, attained critical and popular success in London and New York, and paved the way for such trenchant blends of politics, culture, and comedy as That Was the Week That Was, Monty Python?s Flying Circus, and Saturday Night Live.

Miller went on to write, produce, and present such distinguished television series as States of Mind and The Body in Question for the BBC and PBS and to direct a dozen Shakespeare plays for the BBC. His numerous directing projects over the years ranged from Bach?s St. Matthew?s Passion to Eugene O?Neil?s Long Day?s Journey into Night, from a Merchant of Venice starring Sir Laurence Olivier to a Mafia-style Rigoletto, set in 1950s Little Italy. His published works include The Human Body, The Facts of Life, and The Body in Question, as well as books about Freud, Darwin, and Marshall McLuhan.

Knighted in 2003 for his services to the arts, Miller is also a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London and Edinburgh, and a foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.