UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Frederick Miller is this year’s Penn State nominee for the Beinecke Scholarship, a highly competitive national scholarship for students who plan to pursue research-based graduate degrees in the arts, humanities and social sciences.
Miller, of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, is a junior majoring in theatre studies in the College of Arts and Architecture and comparative literature in the College of the Liberal Arts.
Miller has been involved in theater since his first year at Penn State and has served as the production dramaturg for Penn State Centre Stage’s productions of “Caroline, or Change;” “To Kill a Mockingbird;” “A Little Night Music;” and “Angels in America.”
“For these shows, I conduct research on the show and the context in which it appeared in society,” he said. “I contextualize the piece for those working on the production and I provide dramaturgical support to the director and actors in the rehearsal room.”
Miller has also been a project associate on the #HereToo Project, which he described as a performance piece that seeks to amplify voices of youth activists. He and a cohort of interns, with help from the Student Engagement Network, interviewed State College activists. The interviews were then archived and recorded for the #HereToo Podcast.
His academic interests focus primarily on the 20th and 21st century American theater, both in drama and musical theater, as seen through the course he is teaching through Students Teaching Students, titled THEA 497: American Musical Theatre History: From 9/11 to COVID-19.