ARCHIVE: SEASON 19 | November 2006

interview with Tim Miller

Tim Miller: "I was doing the math recently and I figured that if I continue to tour as a performer for another twenty years, I will end up sleeping in at least 1000 hotel beds in my lifetime on the road. For maximum poetic oomph, let's say 1001 BEDS! Yikes! It's a kinky and funny journey thru the beds and hotels and life on the road as a traveling salesman- oops I mean a traveling performance artist!"

Tim Miller has worked at the intersection of performance, politics, and identity, using his personal experiences to create entertaining but pointed explorations of life as a gay American man-from the perils and joys of sex and relationships to the struggles of political disenfranchisement and artistic censorship. 1001 BEDS, this intimate autobiographical performance collage of Miller's professional and personal life, reveals one of the celebrated creators of a crucial contemporary art form and a tireless advocate for the American dream of political equality for all citizens.

"Tim Miller sings that song of the self which interrogates, with explosive, exploding, subversive joy and freedom, the constitution and borderlines of selfhood. . . . You think you don't need to hear such singing? You do! You must!" --Tony Kushner, playwright of Angels in America

TIM MILLER is an internationally acclaimed solo performer. Hailed for its humor and passion, Miller's solo theater works have delighted and emboldened audiences all over the world at such prestigious venues as Yale Repertory Theatre, the Institute of Contemporary Art (London), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He is the author of the books SHIRTS & SKI and BODY BLOWS and his solo performance works have been published in the play collections O Solo Homo and Sharing the Delirium. Miller's newest book 1001 BEDS, an anthology of his essays and performances was recently published by University Of Wisconsin Press in 2006.

“Miller's technique - a frisky, half-lidded fidget on high alert to audience energies - gives way to flashes of poetic stillness that demonstrate how gracefully Miller has matured without losing either his inquisitive ardor or wicked humor. An almost shamanic spirit emerges when least expected, with striking immediacy. Think casual seduction concealing urgent consciousness-raiser, and you have the measure of "1001 Beds" and the nonpareil explorer of self and spirit who recounts them with such potent assurance”. --David Nichols, LOS ANGELES TIMES

The VORTEX Repertory Company has been the proud producer of Tim Miller’s work in Austin since 1991. His previous performances at The VORTEX include: Us (03), Glory Box (00), Shirts & Skin (98), Naked Breath (94), Stretch Marks (93), My Queer Body (92), and Sex, Love Stories (91).

Miller has taught performance in the theater department at NYU and UCLA. He is a founder of the two most influential performance spaces in the United States: Performance Space 122 on Manhattan's Lower East Side and Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, CA. For more
information go to his website: http://hometown.aol.com/millertale/timmiller.html

“Miller's performance style in 1001 BEDS, which manages to synthesize incantatory segments with looser sections that feel almost improvisational, lends itself well to tracing the ups and downs of someone whose life and loves have often been shoved into the margins of society -- and have also provided the key to his art. His travels for justice, art and personal revelation have led Miller into a lot of strange beds, but like most of us, what he wants most is one safe haven to share with one other simpatico soul”. --Kerry Reid, CHICAGO TRIBUNE

“Miller's wily wordplay uses the metaphor of the bed as the stage for the beginning and end of life, and the site of the most important human experience in between -- love (or perhaps its simulacrum). Miller brought to even his angriest screeds that benign, self-mocking humor that has helped him survive across three contentious decades with his social activism intact. The writing itself is thoroughly engaging; this Whittier-born artist, and his vision of a more humbly democratic and gay-friendly U.S., remains as compelling as ever”. --Anne Marie Welsh, SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE