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July 3, 2009
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Touring all those forbidden places
Change comes fast both in and out of Tim Miller's new piece
by William J. Mann
Cleveland Hailed for their humor and passion, Tim Miller's performances have delighted and emboldened audiences all over the world.
Lay of the Land is Miller's saucy, sharpknifed performance look at the State of the Queer Union. This newest of his solo pieces takes on a fierce and funny examination of citizenship, the
grade-school flag monitoror as I was called at my school, "fag monitor" to choking on cheap meat caught in my throat when I was a ten-yearold gay boy.
Lay of the Land friskily gets at that feeling of gay folks being perpetually on trial, on the ballot, and on the menu.
How did you start work on this piece? What
LAY OF THE BAND
Tim Miller
marriage equality battles and who eats and who gets eaten. Framed by a "No on Prop. 8" protest in downtown Los Angeles, Miller makes pit stops as Abraham and his gay son Isaac are spread out on a 1970s suburban Formica kitchen, the county courthouse explodes in pink jury summons that call queer identity to judgment, and a vision of a Heimlich maneuver that helps America get that homophobia that is choking her out of her throat.
No stranger to controversy he was one of the notorious NEA Four performance artists who had their National Endowment for the Arts grants taken away in the 90s for the content of their work-Miller's performances have been at the center of the culture wars, the fight against AIDS and the struggle for LGBT civil rights for the last twenty years.
But all that pales by comparison to what Miller says has been "the fight of my life" as he tries to claim his equal rights as an American citizen in the most intimate of places, his committed relationship of fifteen years with his Australian partner Alistair McCartney.
William J. Mann: Tell me about the new show.Lay of the Land is a wonderful title. What does it mean to you?
Tim Miller: I am super excited about this brand new piece. I think it is my funniest show, for sure, but also my kinkiest, strongest and most topical. Lay of the Land is a "lay" in all kinds of ways: a sex assignation, a queer citizenship map, and of course a narrative ballad with a recurrent refrain-my favorite way-down-the-list definition for "lay."
I travel constantly performing my shows, and this performance careens from my sexy misadventures performing in 45 states, to marriage equality street protests, to the electoral assaults on gay folks all over the country, to my life as a
is the crucial fuel that sends you on the journey? Right after election day last fall when Prop. 8 passed and took away marriage equality in California, a quarter of a million of us marched in hundreds of cities in all 50 states to protest what had just happened with these electoral hate crimes in California, Florida, Arizona and Arkansas. I was marching with 20,000 of my closest personal friends in L.A., including with many gay couples who got married in our much-tooshort summer of love in California.
A gay couple next to me was carrying a huge blown-up poster of their California marriage license. An SUV drove by and someone shouted "You can stick that marriage license where the sun don't shine."
This lovely "traditional family values" sentiment hurled from a passing SUV fueled on the blood of 400,000 people who have died in Iraq-made me remember that I have always been curious about that expression "where the sun don't shine." This signal our culture tells us again and again to stick it up your you-knowwhat got me really interested to explore all these forbidden and judged places we experience as gay folks and away we go. It's the magic of solo performance.
Your new show Lay of the Land is so intimately connected with what is currently going on in queer America: the ongoing marriage equality battles, the Prop. 8 decision from California Supreme Court, the unjust military discharge of Lt. Dan Choi, Obama's terrible DOMA defense. What is this like?
It's totally exciting and scary performing in the middle of frying pan's sizzle. The piece feels really strong and is very much the piece I would want to be performing at this juicy time-one year after marriage equality came to California, only to be snatched away months later.
It's an auspicious time to be doing a show which has a section about my relationship to the California Bear on our state flag. And a questioning section about when it will really be time to burn our state and national flags for their violations against our humanity. So much is happening every day.
I started a rehearsal a few weeks ago and by the time I was done, New Hampshire, Maine and D.C. had marriage equality.
What was it like having the Prop 8 decision looming during the première performances?
It was very stressful waiting for the Prop. 8 decision in between weeks during the première performance run in May-timely to say the least.
The audiences in Los Angeles were really alive and charged. It was like surfing on a tsunami.
I was wondering what I was going to do if the California Supremes had released their decision during the run. The terrible decision came after I had closed the show, so the next week became protest week. I must have clocked in 30 miles! All those protests after Prop. 8 decision were hard on the feet. I sprained my ankle so I had to limp onto the plane for Tallahassee in June.
You and your Australian partner Alistair McCartney have been the poster couple for gay bi-national partner immigration rights for more than a decade. Where are things now?
Sadly, there has been no "change we can believe in" at all. Gay American citizens with partners from other countries are offered no rights in the U.S. Our life in this country is always hanging by a thread since we never know how long we will be able to stay in the U.S. without these basic rights that gay couples have in every western nation except the U.S.
Alistair is currently on a short term work visa. Couples like Alistair and I are still offered three scenarios in Obama's America in 2009: Your partner is deported, you break up, or you both leave the country and make a life in a more civilized nation than America. Not very pleasant options for someone who performs with a copy of the Constitution in his cargo shorts!
Fortunately Alistair has passports from two countries (Australia and the U.K.) that give gay people and their partners immigration rights, and either country would welcome me as his partner.
You have been through so many battles around LGBT civil rights. You are also someone that travels America as much as anyone I know. What do you glean as you regard the Lay of the Land?
I have had so many amazing, hopeful and surprising experiences, whether performing at a Baptist university in North Carolina or in a shared queer and disability arts center like Mickee Faust in Tallahassee.
Here's a real vision: I was performing recently in Lubbock at Texas Tech. Lubbock-so those Lubbock-folk constantly tell you!—is the second most conservative city in the country after Provo, Utah.
After my performance at Texas Tech in Lubbock, I found myself surrounded by some ROTC students in full uniform. They just wouldn't leave and my stereotyping went into overdrive and I thought they were going to beat me up. But then one of them asked me how could they, as military officers next year, help dismantle "don't ask, don't tell" in their units!
These young officers have more vision and courage than our president.
It definitely shows you never know who your audience is. It also shows that this country is changing-especially its young people and the Lay of the Land is shifting before our eyes.
Tim Miller will be performing Lay of the Land in Cleveland as part of the Ingenuity Festival July 10-12 at the Hanna Theater in Playhouse Square http://ingenuity cleveland.com.
He can be reached at his website www.TimMillerPerformer.com.
William J. Mann is the author of Object of Desire and the forthcoming book on Elizabeth Taylor, How to Be a Movie Star. He may be reached through his website, www. williamjmann.com.