The ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ Tevye, Theodore Bikel to speak at Syracuse University March 17

The ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ Tevye, Theodore Bikel to speak at Syracuse University March 17March 10, 2003Judy Holmesjlholmes@syr.edu

Renowned stage, film and television actor and singer Theodore Bikel will be the speaker for the March 17 installment of the 2003 Syracuse Symposium “Journeys” at Syracuse University. Perhaps best known for immortalizing the role of Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof,” Bikel will speak and perform at 7:30 p.m. in the University’s Schine Student Center Goldstein Auditorium. Admission to the event is by ticket only. Tickets are free for SU faculty, staff and students and $5 for the general community. For ticket information, call the Schine Student Center Box Office at 443-4517.

Born in Vienna in 1924, Bikel was 13 years old when his parents left Austria for Palestine. Fluent in Hebrew, Yiddish and German, with a command of English and French, Bikel intended to study and teach comparative linguistics. But the pull of the theater was stronger and he joined the internationally renowned Habimah Theatre in 1943 as an apprentices actor and a year later, co-founded the Israeli Chamber Theatre, the Cameri.

Bikel graduated from London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1948 and embarked on a stellar career as an actor and musician. In addition to “Fiddler on the Roof,” Bikel’s other stage performances include “The Sound of Music,” “The Sunshine Boys” and “My Fair Lady.” He has performed in more than 35 films, including “The African Queen,” “The Russians Are Coming” and “The Defiant Ones,” for which he received an Academy Award nomination; more recently, he has performed in “Benefit of the Doubt” and “Shadow Conspiracy.”

A well-known folk singer, Bikel founded the Newport Folk Festival and annually performs some 60 concerts across the United States and abroad both as a soloist and with large symphony orchestras. He has recorded numerous albums, including “A New Day,” “For the Young” and “Silent No More,” an album of Soviet Jewish freedom songs smuggled out of the former USSR.

An American citizen since 1961, Bikel has been president of Actor’s Equity, a senior vice president of the American Jewish Congress and an elected delegate to the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

The Syracuse Symposium is an annual intellectual festival celebrating interdisciplinary thinking, imagining and creating. The 2003 theme is “Journeys:” journeys of exploration and discovery, intellectual journeys, mythical and artistic journeys, migrations of peoples, exiles, liberations, pilgrimages and more. The series will continue throughout the Spring 2003 and Fall 2003 semesters and will include lectures, exhibits, performances and other special events.