Tim Miller is a writer, teacher and performance artist based in Venice Beach, Calif. He deals with queer identity and memory, producing work that resonates with humor and progressive politics. To get a sense of Miller's stage energy, imagine drinking six espresso shots at Disney World … and then running into Dubya in mouse ears. YouTube him: He's charged.
Miller was one of the NEA 4 ( a group of performance artists who successfully sued the National Endowment for the Arts [ NEA ] after their grants were revoked on accusations of indecency in the '90s ) , and one of the first members of the HIV/AIDS activist group ACT-UP. He founded two influential performance art spaces: PS122 in New York City, and Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica. He is currently performing his show, US, from his new book, 1001 Beds, which won the 2007 Best Book in Drama-Theater from the Lambda Literary Foundation. In US, he discusses his relationship with Alistair McCartney, his Australian-British partner of 14 years who may soon be in danger of deportation.
Windy City Times: You wrote in Oklahomo! that maybe if you'd never seen Gypsy, you wouldn't have become a performance artist and, in your own way, a stripper. I was wondering why you used this word and how you consider yourself a stripper.
Tim Miller: I have to admit, I am actually naked right now. I suddenly realized that as you asked. … My partner Alistair and I were at the beach, and we just got back. I hosed myself off in the backyard. [ Miller laughs. ] T-M-I …
WCT: No, I love it!
TM: When I started working on the piece I'm performing at Links Hall, I was imagining that it was going to be a piece about exile, and this huge, challenging situation Alistair and I are in, and this nutty country where I can't sponsor my partner of 14 years to remain in this country. As I was writing and performing, though, a lot about musicals started happening. I became interested in the most popular of live performances. Most people—if they've ever gone to live theater—have gone to a musical; it's usually the first thing people see when they're kids. I was seeing how much my radical politics and my queerness and my naked performance-art self had been nurtured, encouraged and emboldened by these sometimes-made-fun-of popular theater forms, shows like Gypsy and Man of La Mancha. I'm not that kind of performer; I've never been in a musical, but it's a literature I love.
WCT: Also in 'Oklahomo!,' you referenced 1776 when you said that 'I will … risk enormous personal and professional embarrassment when I admit the persistent encouragement my political activism has received from this musical about the signing of the Declaration of Independence.' I want you to spill. Are there any other media from which you derive inspiration that you are embarrassed of?
TM: It's easy to say Allen Ginsberg's Howl inspired you, or Dostoevsky or important film or Walt Whitman. That's the legacy I feel I'm part of. But it's easy to talk about Allen Ginsberg or Walt Whitman. Talking about 1776 is something else. Look at the TV shows that we're raised on, that fuel us. On some level, the freakiness of my favorite show when I was nine years old—H.R. Pufnstuff, recently released on DVD, thank God—is just so queer. … What were they thinking? I think mining the personal history of our cultural materials, what's really inspired us, is important. But I don't know if anything is quite as embarrassing as 1776.
All that is fuel for the show [ US ] , which I think is one of my most fun and theatrical shows. It acknowledges that even as Alistair and I enjoy a beach day here in southern California, we have no idea if we'll still be in this country six months from now. The show is as on-topic as when I made it: nothing has changed or improved in our federal government.
WCT: That was one of my questions: What is the status with you and Alistair?
TM: After 14 years together, Alistair and I don't even have the rights that a straight couple would have after 14 seconds. Our federal situation is as bad as it's ever been under the insane administration of the last seven years. The summer of love in California doesn't help Alistair and me at all. There are now two states—Massachusetts and California—where lesbian and gay people can actually call themselves citizens. Gay people are not citizens in any of the other 48 states.
Lesbians and gays having federal marriage equality is going to be a very long fight. Bush has screwed us for the next 30 years with this hideous Supreme Court. They're 50 and Supreme Court justices live longer than anyone on earth; they're the only ones with health care! [ laughter ] The U.S. Government is just so backwards, but it's why I travel and perform in 30 states a year—I have access to media, performing and students, and I'm this non-stop loudmouth gay man talking about marriage equality. That's a real space in creativity to create social change.
WCT: I have a blunt question for you: Why do you talk about your dick so much?
TM: Actually, I think US could use a little more dick, frankly. There's not quite enough, other than that I am naked for about 10 minutes straight. I suppose that's quite enough for some people.
It goes along with my work around queer agency, and sex-positive vision. Beyond the LGBT stuff, I'm interested in confronting this real, dark body phobia that exists apart from straight or gay. It poisons our country and makes us lie to our young people, telling them these incredible falsehoods that shame the body.
One of the big agendas in my work is imagining this rich, poetic space of the body as a narrative. Narratives exist in our skin, in our bones, in our sacs and our pubic hair [ and ] in our earlobes, so the specificity is a rich place to work from. Certainly within that, dicks and pussies are troubled and hidden and made invisible and made weird. That's why I think we need to bring them forward, pierce them, talk about them and wave them about. But my dick is not the only part of my naked self that I'm interested in …
WCT: You know what I mean, though.
TM: No, I know. It's a very good blunt question. These little regions of our waistlines are bizarrely, psychotically messed with. Other than the occasional nude beach in this country, theater and performance-art space are the only places where we ever see naked bodies in public. That's one of the reasons why people, myself included, are interested in going there. It needs addressing.
WCT: You talk about aging in your work, and how a gay man may lose touch with his identity as he ages. How has getting older affected your identity as a gay man? Why might aging shake queer identity more poignantly than for a straight person?
TM: Partly within queer male culture, there's a huge, specific focus on youth and the ideal body—muscular, height-weight proportionate. We can imagine that the male erotic, straight or gay, has a highly visual imagination. All the scientific data tells us that men respond to how things look.
I'm 49 now, and I feel like I look just fine, though I'm no spring chicken. [ Tim says 'spring chicken' cheerfully, like a modest chef half-denying a perfect quiche. ] It's a rich, psychological space for me, even a nice-looking 49-year-old man …
WCT: You are definitely handsome.
TM: Well, thank you. But I perform at a lot of colleges, and if they're all 18- to 22-year-olds, anything over 30 is old. But it's all about this space of vulnerability. Young people are governed by this ideal body stuff that has messed with women for generations. I think we need a better relationship with our flesh, with our humanness. Performing is a good way to get at that.
WCT: What else should your audience know before they come see you in July?
TM: If you live in Illinois, it should bother you every morning when you wake up that lesbian and gay couples have no rights under state law. I want my work to call people to action, to involve them on their own heroes and heroines journeys. When I'm performing for non-queer audiences, I want to deepen that empathy for another way of being human—just as my own sensibility as a white, able-bodied, Protestant, height-weight proportionate faggot has been widened to include issues around gender and class. It should be unbearable to us that we are bringing up the rear of western countries. We can make this country better than it's been. I just want people to know that it doesn't have to be this way.
See Tim Miller at Links Hall at 8 p.m. on July 25 and 26; tickets are $15. Miller is also offering a weeklong performance workshop starting July 21. For more information, contact Erica at emott@linkshall.org, visit www.linkshall.org or call 773-281-0824.
