LONDON (AP)
Patrick Stewart, known to millions of "Star Trek" fans as Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, is returning to the British stage in the revival of a work by playwright J.B. Priestley.
The 61-year-old actor will star in "Johnson over Jordan," one of three of Priestley's plays being staged by the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds.
"Despite the pleasure, interest and quality of life I was getting from television and film, it really was not making me happy," Stewart said.
"I realized theater was where I simply had to be. It's a sense of age _ I don't want to waste my time. I just want everything to be important and not to be trivial."
Born in Mirfield, Yorkshire, Stewart was a Royal Shakespeare Company actor for 27 years before boldly going to the United States to join the cast of "Star Trek."
He will return to the United States in October to make another "Star Trek" movie, but said there were many theatrical roles he would like to perform, including Macbeth and King Lear.
"Johnson over Jordan," about a dead man's journey through the afterlife, runs from Aug. 28 to Sept. 29 at the Playhouse.
The three month festival of Priestley's work will also include "Dangerous Corner" and "Eden End."
Priestley, a prolific writer and broadcaster best known for his play "An Inspector Calls," died in 1984.
------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed