Hailed by The Washington Post as “exquisitely terrifying” in his recent portrayal of teenage assassin Eric Harris in columbinus and called “fascinating” as Hamlet by Maryland reviewers, Karl Miller ’01 continues to impress theatre-goers nationwide with leading roles in critically acclaimed productions. Enter into Miller’s world as he shares some of his experiences on stage and proves just how powerful performing can be.

"You know you are in for a display of acting prowess in the title role when the first image of the play is Karl Miller as Hamlet sitting cross legged at the lip of Tony Cisek’s black and grey set, smoking a cigarette. Normally, you don’t even see the melancholy Dane until scene two, and then his first words are the relatively tame aside ‘A little more than kin,’ not the poetic ‘What a piece of work is man!’

“But Miller, under the inventive direction of Kasi Cambell, starts right out lamenting the loss of his mirth, making sure that this production will be Hamlet, as its title says, and not Claudius or Gertrude or Ophelia or even Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. No, it is Hamlet and Miller’s take is all youthful impatience, adolescent rashness, immature plotting and more than a touch of raging hormones. It is a fascinating performance.”

So read the reviews of Wittenberg’s own Karl Miller, who is making a name for himself in the competitive world of performing arts.

Just six years ago, Miller was at Wittenberg pondering his professional future.
“After toting a double-major in psychology and theatre/dance at Wittenberg for the better part of four years, I knew I had to make a choice before it was all over,” Miller says. “I had a great idea for an honors thesis in psychology, and I had a great idea for a final composition in theatre, but I knew I couldn’t do both and have time to breathe. It was a dilemma I had been neglecting because I genuinely loved both subjects.”

Miller credits Wittenberg’s liberal arts curriculum and its dedicated professors for both creating the dilemma and helping him solve it. After taking advantage of many of the opportunities Wittenberg offers, including a study-abroad trip to Cape Town, South Africa, Miller realized that his future was in the theatre, and a star was born.

“One morning late in my junior year, as I was tearing myself apart trying to decide which major to drop, I camped out at Luke Dennis ’01 and Dan Stroeh’s ’01 house,” Miller recalls. “At the time, Luke was preparing to go off to a Ph.D. theatre program at Tufts, and Dan was finishing his one-man show it is no desert. I looked at these two guys – the first a spectacular director; the other a spectacular writer – and I knew I wanted to join them.

“I knew that if I could spend the rest of my life in the company of great artists like that, I’d be happy.”

After a modest start as Henry Percy in a production of Kit Marlowe at Studio Theatre Secondstage in Washington, D.C., in October 2001, in which he worked 45-hour weeks for three months to collect a grand total of $300, Miller now has 17 professional productions to his credit.

His performance in columbinus, however, has moved his career into fifth gear. Produced by the United States Theatre Project, the show earned a positive review in the May 22, 2006, edition of The New York Times following the play’s opening at the New York Theater Workshop. The New York opening of the play came about a year after it first gained acclaim at the Round House Theatre in Silver Spring, Md., and later at the Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska.

The play focuses on the tragic events that sparked the April 1999 massacre of 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. Miller is one of just eight actors in the play, portraying a “freak” who later assumes the role of Eric Harris, one of the two gunmen on that fateful day.

“It’s Miller’s Harris who lights the fuse,” writes Washington Post staff writer Peter Marks. “He plays Harris as a clueless volcano, angry at everything and at a loss to understand why. At a poignant turn in the story, a bully knocks his bottle of antidepressants to the ground and he’s forced to grope for the pills on his hands and knees, to salvage his one source of stability.”

The play received four 2006 Helen Hayes Award nominations, including Best Resident Play and Best Director, Resident Play, and Miller was one of 10 individuals nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor, Resident Play. Helen Hayes Awards are given annually to the top professional theatre productions in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.

Although Miller, who had eight theatre productions to his credit while a student at Wittenberg, including the lead in Moliere’s classic play Tartuffe in 2001, has made his mark as an actor, his greatest professional interest remains playwriting. Like so many others through the years, Miller found his calling and honed his skills while studying on Wittenberg’s campus.

“Dan Stroeh and I decided to produce a play I wrote during my sophomore year called Hijinks and Allegory,” Miller said. “It was a scrappy Pirandellian farce, and it went over extremely well in Blair Hall Theatre for three performances in April 2000.

“The Hijinks and Allegory production brought it all together. I wrote, directed, and played the narrator. My friends helped rehearse and design it. Dan played the lead character. We all had an incredible time.”

Miller continues to write today, but he has realized that acting is in his immediate future. He said he considers playwriting both his first and last love when it comes to the theatre

“I started acting in Washington just to stay involved in the theatre, to keep a pulse on the business while I secretly stashed away in 24-hour diners scratching out the first act to five different wonderful stories that will never see the light of day,” Miller says. “I never expected to last as an actor, much less receive an enduring spot in the community, and I think the absence of that expectation freed me to dig in and enjoy it more.

“Before I knew it, theatres were inviting me back, critics were saying nice things, and artistic directors were collaborating directly with me to plan future seasons. I still write every day, and my day job involves screenwriting for a small production company in Potomac, Md. I did some heavy editorial work on columbinus during earlier drafts of the play and got listed as a ‘contributor.’ But I haven’t carved out the time and energy to focus specifically on playwriting yet.”

If the past is any guide, Miller will likely find success as a playwright in the future. His Wittenberg experience continues to play a significant part in that success, and he knows he is better off because of his four years on campus.

“When I’m competing against a conservatory kid from New York for a part in D.C., I remember how thankful I am that I chose a liberal arts school instead,” Miller says. “You can’t have art without life first. Regardless of whether you think theatre is a mirror or a hammer, you have to do some hardcore living and learning outside the studio before you can write a story, empathize with a Russian peasant, don a British accent or even design a light plot.

“Travel, family, love and a willingness to learn things outside your domain will benefit your career just as much as any intensive training in technique. Audiences can pick out the actors who bring life to the stage instead of just technique.”

– Ryan Maurer