Tim Miller is pissed — and characteristically blunt.
 
The 50-year-old queer performance artist, who brings his latest work, Lay of the Land, to Cleveland’s Ingenuity Festival next week, voted for Obama in the last election. And so he’s not thrilled with the recent actions of the president (and so-called “fierce advocate” for LGBT rights).
 
“We’ve been thrown under the bus and run over a thousand times since January,” Miller tells me from Los Angeles, where he’s preparing for his Northeast Ohio performances.

And he’s just getting started.

 
Tim Miller is no stranger to Cleveland, having memorably brought his one-man shows to Cleveland Public Theatre in the past. (James Levin is the founder of both CPT and Ingenuity, so it’s an obvious connection for Miller to bring his latest piece to the region’s prominent arts and technology festival.)

But Miller stands out whenever he’s in town — his ultra-laidback demeanor, lithe moves and cool tan reveal his youth in Southern California. You can almost imagine him spending months on the beach, sipping chilled cocktails and letting his life pass him by entirely.

Yet the artist seized control of his destiny early on; as an aspiring actor and writer, he realized he couldn’t count on someone else to provide opportunity.

“As an emerging queer child, really knowing that if I were going to tell my own story and perform it, I was going to have to write it myself,” he says. So he did — moving to New York City and creating solo pieces that addressed touchy LGBT issues, such as HIV/AIDS and marriage and immigration equality.

He also launched P.S. 122, in New York, and Highways, in Santa Monica — performance spaces that have provided venues for hundreds (if not thousands) of other artists to find audiences.

It was enough to draw the attention of the National Endowment for the Arts, which in 1990 awarded him a grant to support his work. But in a widely publicized reversal, the first Bush administration stripped him and three others of their funding because of questions about subject matter (all four tackled homosexuality, and three were out gays or lesbians).

“I talk about sex. I take my clothes off. I’m a gay person gathering audiences in 46 of 50 states,” Miller explains. “So that’s all it took to take your funding.”

Despite a successful American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, the NEA eventually stopped funding individual artists.

“We’re just a coward country because we won’t fund any individual artists because some queer might get it,” Miller says.

And the new administration hasn’t turned out the way the artist hoped.

“I won’t get any more funding under the Obama NEA than under the Bush NEA,” Miller tells me.

We’re speaking just after the president refused any unilateral action on Don’t Ask, Don’t tell, and days following the Justice Department’s heinous brief defending the Defense of Marriage Act.
 
“It’s such an unpleasant week, with Obama’s complete failure in terms of queer rights,” the artist sighs. An uninitiated Miller interviewer might interpret that as exasperation or giving up, but I know he’s just getting warmed up.
 
“If the Bush administration had done it, we would have been doing mass arrests in the street,” he continues.
 
Despite Democratic presidents (Clinton and Obama) and Congresses, Miller says it’s shocking nothing has even been passed in favor of LGBT rights at the national level.
 
“This Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell shit is unbelievable,” he says. “After 17 years, we’re still dealing with the Clinton administration?”
 
Out gay soldier Lt. Dan Choi’s pending discharge is fresh on Miller’s mind. (Choi, an Arabic-speaking linguist and West Point grad, could be the 266th LGBT serviceperson discharged for being queer since Obama was inaugurated.)
 
“That Obama has kicked him out is just outrageous,” he says. “In some ways, there’s this constant throughline that our government, and every Western government, doesn’t have our best interests at heart.”
 
And then there’s that awful Obama DOMA court memo, “which he is to blame for,” Miller says. “You can’t pawn this off on the Justice Department. Obama has saddled us with this monstrous argument.”
 
“When is this shit going to stop?” he asks. “It certainly hasn’t stopped with Obama.”

By now, Miller has gotten himself fully in gear.

 “We don’t get these people elected and then get treated like shit. That has to stop.”

And: “Something has to happen. It has to be big. He has to do an executive order to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” he says. And if all Obama does in his first term is hate-crimes legislation, “He will be a spectacular failure.”
 

“[Talking about Obama] may sound off-subject, but it’s really what this piece is about,” Miller adds, after a pause.

It all provides the context for Lay of the Land, which premiered in May at Highways. It’s a piece that Miller says examines what it is to be an American — striving to be a good citizen in a country where a large portion rejects your presence.
 
“We’re not citizens in Ohio or California. We’re simply not,” he says. “[But] it doesn’t have to wreck your day. It doesn’t have to stop you from having a mojito — I need to write that down.”
 
It’s a typical Miller turn — switching from bleak politics to his bone-dry, cutting and witty humor. (You get a glimpse of that humor in the double-entendre of his show's name.) Even though he’s more than 2,000 miles away, I can imagine his generous smile.
 
“This is a job for performance art,” he continues. “To make this piece that dredges up my days as a flag monitor in high school, and we were called fag monitors.”

It’s a show that tackles what Miller calls the three markers that define citizenship: marriage, military service and voting (two of which are unavailable to most queer Americans).

“I guess my throughline has been that we’re always in this complicated relationship with the United States,” he says.

Miller performs the piece carrying a copy of the Constitution while wearing the very American apparel of his “so-out they’re-in” cargo shorts.

“I do the Heimlich maneuver on the Statue of Liberty to finally cough up this homophobic crap that’s choking our country,” he explains. “… To perch on a newly Heimliched Statue of Liberty really feels alive.”

He continues: “The metaphor of that is really powerful to me. Maybe if we get enough citizens [into the statue’s crown], Obama’s bigotry will really start to fall, including these promises that he made again and again.”

Miller hopes the piece’s resolution is uplifting.

“It’s a really rich space to leave the audience with, to leave myself with,” he says. “It’s extremely hopeful, I think.”

After all, during his run-throughs a number of weeks ago, two states passed marriage equality, and the District of Columbia approved the recognition of same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.

“I better do another run-through and see what happens,” he says, and I can imagine the lightness in his eyes that reveals this artist isn’t finished — he’s preparing for battle.

Thankfully, his wit and intelligence are weapons the other side is lacking.

Comments (1)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

This is a MUST see show!
written by Susan , July 02, 2009

Really wonderful interview. And, in the end, Tim Miller does work the audience toward something more uplifting than what we, the sort-of citizens of the USA, have been getting from our politicians and our media.
Put down your mojito, get off the couch, and get to this performance. It is a real call to action!

report abuse

vote down

vote up

Votes: +0