Miller Theatre

The Kathryn Bache Miller Theatre is a 688-seat proscenium-style theater inside Dodge Hall, and is entered from Broadway on the corner of 116th Street. It was established in 1988. Hosts plenty of events, many of which students can attend for free or at steeply discounted rates. For some reason the insist on charging Columbia organizations a crapload of money to use it. So they end up using the less performance-friendly Roone Arledge Auditorium. The acoustics are mediocre anyway.

McMillin Academic Theater

Before its rebirth in 1988, Miller Theatre was known as the McMillin Academic Theater, in honor of Dodge Hall's donor. McMillin seated an audience of 1,000 and had a smaller stage than Miller. Schuyler Chapin recalled his first trip into McMillin in 1976, when he took over as dean of the School of the Arts: "The chairs were falling apart, the stage was terrible, and when it rained, water ran down the center aisle. I said, 'You've got to be kidding.' But McMillin had a lot of history to it, so I really wanted to have it redone. Of course, when I first proposed doing that, I was given 89 reasons why it couldn't be done, the essential one being that there was no money." Chapin was able to secure a $1 million grant from the Kathryn and Gilbert Miller Fund along with donations from trustees to fund a $3 million renovation that was completed in 1988.

Map

<googlemap lat="40.808105" lon="-73.963611" type="map" zoom="16" width="500" height="300" controls="small"> 40.808105, -73.963611, Miller Theatre </googlemap>

External links

• Miller Theatre website
• For Columbia Theater, A Festive First Night, New York Times, September 17, 1988