Keywords: Catholic University of America; The Exorcist; Pulitzer Prize; That Championship Season; Tony Award; University of Scranton
Abstract: Playwright and actor Jason Miller was born in New York State in 1939. After education in Scranton and Washington, DC, Miller went on to write a number of plays, including the highly-acclaimed That Championship Season. He was also an actor, receiving an Academy Award nomination for his role in The Exorcist, as well as acting and directing with the Scranton Public Theatre. Miller died in 2001 in Scranton.
Biography:
Actor and playwright Jason Miller was born on April 22, 1939, on Long Island. He was the son of John Miller, an electrician, and Mary Miller, a special education teacher. Very early in Miller’s life, the family moved to Scranton, which became his “home town.” Jonathan Hershey writes in the Dictionary of Literary Biography that Miller “specialized in athletics and delinquency” at St. Patrick’s High School, before we was turned on to acting and public speaking by Sister Celine, one of his teacher. After that, Miller’s life found more focus, driving him to study theatre and playwriting at the University of Scranton, at which institution he earned a B.A. in 1961. He went on to take classes at Catholic University in Washington where he wrote his first play, The Winners, and met his first wife, Linda Gleason, in 1963. The couple had three children before their 1973 divorce. Miller later remarried Ruth Josem.
Following his year at Catholic University, Miller began a difficult, struggling period of his career, as most actors do. He and his wife moved to New York, where he got some Off-Off-Broadway roles, small parts in soap operas and the like. He had more success in the regional theatre circuits. To support himself in the meantime, he did any number of odd jobs. His playwriting took a similar path. In 1967, he able to have three of his one-act plays produced Off-Off-Broadway: Perfect Son, Circus Lady, Lou Gehrig Did Not Die of Cancer. He moved up a level, staging Nobody Hears a Broken Drum Off Broadway in 1970. While Broken Drum would get poor reviews, Miller would achieve much greater success during 1972 and 1973.
The period from 1972 through 1973 would bring Jason Miller to prominence both as an actor and as a playwright. While doing dinner theatre in Fort Texas in 1970, Miller began writing what would become his signature play: That Championship Season. The play is set at a reunion of a championship high school basketball team at their coach’s house. They find, after prompting from the coach, that they are no longer the “team” they once were. By play’s end, they reconcile and swear to act honorably in the future. The play received rave reviews and earned both the Tony Award for Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. That same season, Miller was nominated for his role of Father Karras in The Exorcist. Miller continued writing teleplays and acting. He also spent a great deal of time in his hometown of Scranton, acting as Artistic Director of the Scranton Public Theatre for many years.
Jason Miller died of a heart attack on May 13, 2001, and is survived by his four children.
Works:
Plays
Teleplays
Poetry
Sources:
This biography was prepared by Alan Jalowitz, Summer 2005.