FARMINGTON – Michael Williams, University of Maine at Farmington’s visiting Libra Scholar and managing director of the Cape Town, South Africa Opera, will lead an interactive musical workshop with pianist Lily Funahashi introducing the music and themes of South African theater.

The workshop, featuring extracts from musicals such as “Who Killed Jimmy Valentine?” “The Orphans of Qumbu” and “District 6,”will be held at 11:45 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 25, in Nordica Auditorium, UMF Merrill Hall.

The event, which is sponsored by the Office of the Provost, is free and open to the public and encourages active participation from all attendees.

“Who Killed Jimmy Valentine?,” written by Williams and Allan Stephenson and based upon the novel by the same name by Williams, is a contemporary South African story of romance and murder.

“The Orphans of Qumbu,” also written by Williams and Stephenson, and based upon another William’s novel, “The Secret Song,” is the story of Sofia, Sticks and Silas, who journey through the desert in search of the Qumbu valley.

“District 6,” written by South African writers David Kramer and Taliep Petersen, is a love story set against the forced removals of a community by the apartheid regime in the 1960s.

Williams is teaching at the university for the fall semester due to the Libra Scholar initiative, an endowed program established in 1989, which was designed to bring scholars who have a national and/or international reputation to campuses of the University of Maine System.

He studied at the University of Cape Town and has been a drama teacher in Nepal, an assistant director for New Sadler’s Wells Opera in London, and a theater professor on board the University of Pittsburgh’s Semester at Sea program. Williams has directed a large repertoire of operas for Cape Town Opera and the State Theatre.

Williams has written several novels for teenagers and has published an anthology of South African operas for Young People (Heinemann), which included “The Milkbird,” “Seven Headed Snake,” “Child of the Moon” and “The Orphans of Qumbu.” He wrote the librettos for “Enoch Prophet of God,” “Sacred Bones,” “Buchuland” and “Love and Green Onions.” His latest opera, “Poet and Prophetess,” will have its premier in Sweden in 2008.

An established writer of crime fiction, he created the Jake Mulligan Mystery series, which includes “Who Killed Jimmy Valentine?” “Hijack City” and “The Eighth Man.” He is working on his 10th novel.

Williams will also be featured at two upcoming South African themed events at the university. At 7 p.m. Monday, Oct. 29, at Lincoln Auditorium in UMF’s Roberts Learning Center, Williams will introduce and discuss various operas of South Africa, and at 11:45 a.m., Thursday, Nov. 1, in Thomas Auditorium in UMF’s Preble/Ricker Hall, he will be a panelist along with other UMF faculty members discussing the political, social and economic changes in South Africa since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

For more information, contact Valerie Huebner, UMF executive assistant to the president, at 778-7258 or [email protected].