RELEASED: September 11, 2001

DANVILLE, KY – Centre College will sponsor a special lecture by Ben Cameron, Executive Director of Theatre Communications Group (TCG). TCG is the national service organization for the American nonprofit professional theater and is located in New York City. Cameron's talk, entitled "Theatre and the Arts in the Cyber Age," will take place on September 18 at 8 p.m. in Weisiger Theatre on the Centre campus. The public is invited to attend this free event.

Tony Haigh, Centre College Drama Program Chair, comments, "Ben Cameron is one of the foremost advocates for theatre and the arts in America today -- but "advocate" is too weak a word - he's an activist, a scholar, a practitioner, an entrepreneur, and a thinker. We are delighted to have him here in Kentucky and at Centre College."

Before assuming his position at TCG, Cameron had joined the Dayton Hudson Foundation in Minneapolis in 1993, serving as Senior Program Officer; subsequently, he joined Target Stores (a division of Dayton Hudson) as manager of community relations. His responsibilities included the supervision of a $51 million national giving program that embraced grant giving in arts, education and social action. From 1988-92, he worked at the National Endowment for the Arts. He has addressed groups at the annual conferences of Opera America, the American Symphony Orchestra League, Dance USA, Americans for the Arts, and others. He has taught classes at the Yale School of Drama, Yale College, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. In addition, he has published various articles on theater, including a monthly editorial column in American Theatre magazine.

Cameron has written on the state of not-for-profit theatre for the New York Times and has been a frequent guest in the media, representing Target in a 30-minute interview on CNN, serving as a guest on the Jim Lehrer Online Newshour, and, since 1996, as an annual panelist for the Texaco Opera Quiz on the Live from the Metropolitan broadcasts from New York.

Mr. Cameron graduated from the Yale School of Drama in 1981 with an MFA in dramaturgy. He received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for summer study and was a former John Motley Morehead scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he received a B.A. in 1975.

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