nary 6. 2004
THEATER
......... ¥.........
Amid rampant war and
an anti-ga^y government
agenda, Tim Miller asks
what the hell is wrong
with us
by
TWO
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L isa B radshaw
alifornia queer perform
ance artist Tim Miller
has already sent six
boxes to London. He
and his partner, Alistair
McCartney, “have been
through so much,” he
remarks, “moments where
we thought we were going to
Tim Miller
have to leave any minute.”
performs the
Miller, who returns to
“ wild political
Portland on Feb. 21 with
striptease” of
his new one-man show, Us,
Us Feb. 21 at
is part of a growing number
Be ho Theatre
of queer hinational couples
who, due to a lack of family
status, have difficulty living together in the
United States.
Miller’s previous show, Glory Box, which
he brought to a sold-out crowd in Portland
four years ago, centered around discrimina
tion against same-sex couples in immigration.
Foreign partners of U .S. citizens must find
alternatives to staying in the country when
civil marriage is not an option. Miller and
M cCartneys alternative is “asylum," as he
puts it, in England. McCartney’s work visa
expires in October.
Us is a continuation of similar themes hut
expanded due to an ever-expanding negative
political climate for sexual minorities. “I want
ed to dig more into... where do feelings of exile
originate for gay people,” Miller explains. “The
question I keep dealing with is this ‘what’s
wrong with us’ question— both its meanings of
what’s wrong with lesbian and gay couples that
we’re treated so shabbily in America, but, of
course, the bigger question all Americans
should he asking: What’s wrong with us— with
Am erica.... We’re so far behind the rest of the
Western world, .certainly lesbian and gay
rights in a dramatic way, hut everything else—
health care, prison reform, education— all the
big markers of what a civilized country should
actually think count.”
Being bom into the Vietnam War era com
pounded Miller’s early sense of isolation at
knowing he was gay. He admits to planning his
own conscientious objection when he was 9
years old, complete with a map above his bed
outlining how he would hitchhike to British
Columbia “the minute I turned 18, before I let
America destroy my life."
Now, 35 years later and in a new century,
most of those old fears are hack— if they ever
left. "Since I’ve been a little kid, I never really
felt secure or safe in this country. The current
situation I’m in only reminds me of that. So
[the show] is kind of pulling [in] some of those
narratives and stories as a way of getting at this
big, gnarly ‘us’ question."
But let’s not forget that Miller is gay and,
therefore, gets at the marriage equality and
immigration issues “through the Broadway
musical,” he laughs. Having been enchanted
by Man of La Mancha — a “beautiful, progres
sive, overblown utopian kind of thing”—
Miller became your stereotypical musical-
obsessed gay youth.
At the beginning of Us, he and McCartney
are packing up to leave the country, and he has
to decide what to take with him. “And that
leads me to start looking at 12 boxes of Broad
way musicals,” he says wryly. “So there’s a sweet
story about wishing I had played Oliver in the
movie musical and the year in my life when I
assumed an English accent.”
Miller began creating one-man perform
ance art pieces during the Reagan administra
tion. In 1990, during the first Bush White
House, he became one of the N EA 4— artists
who had their National Endowment for the
Arts grants revoked by the federal government
for "indecent” work. The four artists sued, and
the money was eventually reinstated.
Does he ever feel like he’s back in those
times? “Yeah,” he answers, “except it’s so
much worse.” Fueled by a never-ending
right-wing attack on queers, all Miller’s
dozen pieces are about “the emotional/
psychological/sexual/political topography of
being queer in Am erica,” he says. “T h at’s my
subject.”
Although Miller attracts a mostly queer
crowd to his shows, he says he never feels he’s
preaching to the choir. “Gay people are so still
afraid to see the Systems of homophobia in our
country and the kind of systemic, monstrous
bigotry at the heart of the Republican Party
and as a tributary of our whole culture,” he
exclaims. “The fact is, we’re really afraid to
take power and actually call it like we see it.”
A 1st), wherever Miller takes one of his
provocative performances, the media follow—
he’s on local TV or the radio or the daily paper.
“When I got on Good Morning Chattanooga
talking about marriage equality years ago, it
was probably the first time in Chattanix>ga,
Tenn., that anyone in public had ever talked
about it! That is the opposite of preaching to
the converted.... The performance is the tip of
the iceberg.” JH
T im M iller performs Us 8 p.m. Feb. 21 at Echo
Theatre, 1515 S.E . 37th Ave. Tickets are $16
from Gai-Pied, Gold Door, Music Millennium or
TicketsWest. Post-show reception tickets are $5 at
the door, which benefits the Portland chapter of the
Lesbian and Gay Immigration Rights Task Force.
L isa B radshaw is Arts & Culture Editor of Just
Out.