Tim Miller makes sexual exploration, and human rights legislation, a matter for the stage. (Credit: Tim Miller)

Visionary. Controversial. Homo-sexy. One-man-show performer Tim Miller has been labeled a lot of things, but that’s just par for the course in gay rights/arts territory. On February 24th, Miller is coming to the Black Box Theatre at LSU, and no stone will go unturned.

Miller may be an established performer now, but his journey wasn’t a cakewalk. He began his sexual and spiritual exploration at the age of 19, traipsing about California in a way only Jack Kerouac would understand, with his thumb perpetually extended. In the infancy of his days as a “wandering queer performance artist,” Miller was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Solo Performer Fellowship in 1990. The endowment was overturned due to alleged political pressure under the first Bush Administration, concerning the nature of Miller’s work.

Miller, along with Karen Finley, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes (known as the NEA 4), sued the federal government with the help of the ACLU. The group initially won a settlement in the amount of their defunded grants and court costs, on the grounds that their First Amendment rights had been violated.

It wasn’t exactly a happy ending, however. The “decency clause” (legislation requiring consideration of general standards of respect and decency for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public) is explicitly applicable to art grants. The clause cost them their case before the US Supreme Court.

Since then, Miller has produced many performances focusing on issues of sexual legislation and equality, using pieces like Glory Box (1999) and Us (2003) as “funny, sexy, and politically charged explorations of same-sex marriage.”

Lay of the Land is Miller’s most recent solo work. He explains his new show as an exploration of the forbidden places experienced only by gay people – a sort of redefined road map of the gay community. The show is intended to educate audiences about Miller’s experiences as a gay American performer living in the United States, but the road map will be hard to navigate, to say the least.

And that’s why performance is necessary. Miller has taken on the “gnarly chore” of battling the contradictions in America today, “by whatever theatrical and performance means necessary: garrulous ranting, bittersweet two-hanky narrative, two-lesson tap-dancing, cheerful nudity, poetic mapping, and social-transforming soap-box standing!”

Miller believes the country is changing, especially in youth culture, and that “the lay of the land is shifting before our eyes.”

Right after Prop 8 passed in California in 2008, denying marriage equality for numerous LGBT individuals, a quarter of a million people marched all over the United States in order to protest the “electoral hate crimes” taking place.  Miller marched in Los Angeles with “20,000 of [his] closest personal friends.” The chaotic battlefield of picket signs, hurled expletives and the threats to shove “marriage license[s] where the sun don’t shine” – these were the aphrodisiacs that helped conceive Lay of the Land. The exploration of the forbidden, brought on by expressions our culture uses to antagonize minorities who do not adopt traditional family values “is the magic of solo performance,” Miller said.

If you’re unsure of what separates Miller’s show from a play, don’t sweat it. He’s never spent much time worrying about the performance art-versus-theatre debate, anyway.

“I’m not concerned whether it’s butter or margarine,” he said. “Except where sex is involved.” LSU’s Department of Communications Studies is hosting the event in the HopKins Black Box Theatre, a not-for-profit experimental theatre and classroom managed by the Performance Studies area.

“Performance Studies at LSU is one of the most important places in the entire US that is exploring the nature of performance, self and society,” said Miller.

The Black Box will also be showcasing another Tim Miller production, with Miller as the director of a workshop for LSU performance students, entitled Civil Hands. But don’t expect to get yours on a script; Civil Hands doesn’t exist. Not yet, anyway. This “workshop performance” isn’t a polished piece, but instead a work-in-progress, developed with a student ensemble leading up to an eventual public performance.

“[Tim] is a brilliant workshop leader,” said Dr. Patricia A. Suchy, associate professor of Communication Studies. “He gets incredible work out of people in a compressed time period [and is] known in our profession for being amazing at it.”

Miller will also be giving a lecture for the Communication Studies department. Entitled His Story of Tongues, the lecture encourages people to find their voices and to speak out on social and personal injustices. The hope is that Miller’s performances transcend sexual orientation and identification in a way that will resonate with everyone.

Tim’s show, Lay of the Land, will begin at 7:30pm on Thursday, February 24th, and Civil Hands runs on Saturday, February 26th at 7:30pm. Tickets are made available to the public one half hour before each performance at the door of the HopKins Black Box (137 Coates Hall) on the LSU campus. There is a suggested donation of $5 for shows and $7 for guest artist performances.