Patrick Stewart named Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professor at Oxford

17 January 2007

The actor, Patrick Stewart, has been named as the next Cameron Mackintosh Visiting Professor of Contemporary Theatre based at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, and will make his inaugural lecture in April. He will succeed the Director Phyllida Lloyd.

Known to a wide audience as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek, Patrick Stewart has managed successfully to bridge the gap between the world of Shakespearean theatre and contemporary film and television.

When accepting the appointment, Mr Stewart said: ‘I am honoured, delighted, thrilled to bits and tickled pink.’ The Master of St Catherine's College, Professor Roger Ainsworth, said: ‘I am absolutely delighted to welcome Patrick as the next Cameron Mackintosh Professor’, and added: ‘It will please an enormous number of people that he has agreed to do this.’

The Chair of Contemporary Theatre, founded through a grant from the Mackintosh Foundation at St Catherine's College, aims to promote interest in, and the study and practice of, contemporary theatre. The Visiting Professorship has previously been held by actors, writers, directors, and producers including Stephen Sondheim, Sir Alan Ayckbourn, Sir Richard Eyre, Dame Diana Rigg and Sir Tim Rice.

Born and raised in Mirfield, West Yorkshire, Patrick Stewart took up acting at an early age. At seventeen he enrolled at the Bristol Old Vic, and two years later made his professional stage debut at the Theatre Royal, Lincoln, playing Morgan in an adaptation of Treasure Island.

Working with the Royal Shakespeare Company he has played such roles as King John, Henry IV, Titus Andronicus and, currently, Antony in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra at a production at the Novello Theatre in London. His other recent theatre credits include A Christmas Carol, The Ride Down Mt Morgan, Johnson Over Jordan and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Alongside his extensive theatre work, Mr Stewart has had an enormously successful film and television career. He played the character of Professor Xavier in the blockbuster films X-Men, and has also reprised his role as Captain Jean-Luc Picard for the Star Trek films. Recent television credits include The Simpsons, Frasier, American Dad, Extras and Eleventh Hour.

His long and distinguished career has resulted in numerous awards and nominations, including a Grammy for his album narrating Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, the Will Award from The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington DC which annually honours an individual who makes a “significant contribution to classical theatre in America” and in 2001 he was awarded the OBE. He is an Honorary Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

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Notes to Editors:

• The Mackintosh Foundation was established by Sir Cameron Mackintosh in 1988 to promote and develop theatre and the performing arts; to provide relief for the homeless, to relieve suffering of and promote research into the causes and treatment of AIDS; and to provide for medical research and relief of sickness.
• The Cameron Mackintosh Drama Fund for Contemporary Theatre has helped some of the University’s brightest young actors, directors, producers and writers, stage shows during the annual Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
• Sir Cameron Mackintosh was knighted for services to the British Theatre in 1996 and is an Honorary Fellow of St Catherine’s College.