An Audience with Boz

Featuring Charles Dickens impersonator Roger Jerome

Charles Dickens impersonator Roger Jerome will take the stage at the Howard Performing Arts Center on Wednesday, Oct. 28, at 7 p.m. for "An Audience with Boz." This event, which is located on the campus of Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Mich., is free and open to the public.

While in character as Charles Dickens, including full makeup and costume, Jerome will be sharing biographical tidbits about Dickens' life as well as dramatically rendering select portions of the novelist's well-known passages.

Jerome, a native of Great Britain and a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, has worked for many years in the United States as an actor on stage and in commercials, as well as a drama director and acting teacher.

He says he enjoys doing Dickens because "for a hammy old actor you can go over the top and for actors there's a certain delight in doing that." He also enjoys conveying information about Dickens' life, which he says "is quite surprising and explains a lot." And Jerome enjoys being "the purveyor of someone who was a genius, like a Dickens or a Chekov."

Dickens' the author of classics such as A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol and Little Dorrit, the BBC film version of which won seven Emmys last year is considered one of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century.

This performance is for the second annual John O. Waller Lectureship in the Arts, a series sponsored by the Andrews University Department of English in honor of long-time English professor John O. Waller. He chaired the Department of English from 1963-1979. The lectureship, which was established in his honor by his widow Elaine, is intentionally planned to take place on Oct. 28, the day before the anniversary of what would have been Waller's 93rd birthday.