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Tim Miller

@millertale

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https://18thstreet.org/event/citizen-artist-reading-group-may17/

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I am mourning my beloved Michael Kearns. AIDS performer-warrior. Big brother. Friend since 1984. Truly one of a kind. The world is a smaller place. This is Michael and I at the Highways Performance Space & Gallery AIDS Memorial floor re-inscribing the name of our great friend playwright James Carroll Pickett. Michael and Jim are together again. I love you, Michael by @millertale

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11 days ago

I am beyond thrilled to share that the recently completed documentary Tim Miller Citizen Artist has officially been selected for @stlfilmfest !! This project is 3 years of production and 1 year of post in the making, and I am incredibly grateful to have had a part in the process. Come see our work’s STL debut in November!

“Tim Miller Citizen Artist: Performing Stories to Change the Ending” will screen at SLIFF on November 8 at 11:30 am. Tickets will be available after October 1st 😇

Directed by Heather M. Carver & William T. Horner

A Give ‘Em Hell Production

Edited by Zoë Calsyn

Composed by Holden Franklin @holdenfranklin

Filmed by William T. Horner (@profaloha.mizzou), Dany Fischer (@danyfischer.pdf), Zoë Calsyn, Baxter Stein (@steinbaxter), Nick Sheaffer (@nicksheaf)

FEATURING

Tim Miller

Moises Kaufman
Jordan Peimer
Doug Sadownick
Mark Russell
Jeff McMahon
David Roman
Craig Gingrich-Philbrook
Joan Lipkin
David Schweizer
Tony Kushner
Dan Kwong
Danielle Brazel
Steven Reigns
Greg Miller
David Cole
Holly Hughes
Alistair McCartney
Brad Miller
Gabe Levi
Ryan Haddad
Kymon Warman
Jesus Valles
Leo Garcia

Official Poster by Tricia Carver-Horner by @millertale

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a month ago

Just a few more days until our first Stage and Screens Sessions event of the 2026-27 academic year!
🗓️Tuesday, September 15, 12-1:30pm in Malibu 140:

“The Power of Performance: Tim Miller as Citizen Artist”

FREE event featuring performance artist @millertale and filmmakers Heather Carver and William Horner, who will be premiering their documentary about the artist’s life and work, _Tim Miller, Citizen Artist: Performing Stories to Change the Ending_ on September 19 at the Kansas City International Film Festival.

Tim will perform a short excerpt of one of his solo shows, the filmmakers will join us remotely to screen an excerpt of the documentary, and a joint Q&A will follow.

More about the film and Tim Miller:
Citizen Artist explores the life and career of the internationally acclaimed performance artist Tim Miller who, over his long career made crucial early performances about gay identity and HIV/AIDS, fought a free speech case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court as one of the “NEA Four,” and co-founded two groundbreaking performances spaces in New York and Los Angeles, PS 122 and Highways Performance Space, both of which continue to be hubs for creativity and change. A fierce defender of the First Amendment and an uncompromising figure for LGBTQ rights and the rights of marginalized people for more than four decades, Tim Miller is an artist who performs to change the world for the better. by @millertale

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a month ago

📣 Our first Stage and Screens Sessions event of the 2026-27 academic year is almost here:
🗓️Tuesday, September 15, 12-1:30pm in Malibu 140:

“The Power of Performance: Tim Miller as Citizen Artist”

FREE event featuring performance artist @millertale and filmmakers Heather Carver and William Horner, who will be premiering their documentary about the artist’s life and work, _Tim Miller, Citizen Artist: Performing Stories to Change the Ending_ on September 19 at the Kansas City International Film Festival.

Tim will perform a short excerpt of one of his solo shows, the filmmakers will join us remotely to screen an excerpt of the documentary, and a joint Q&A will follow.

More about the film and Tim Miller:
Citizen Artist explores the life and career of the internationally acclaimed performance artist Tim Miller who, over his long career made crucial early performances about gay identity and HIV/AIDS, fought a free speech case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court as one of the “NEA Four,” and co-founded two groundbreaking performances spaces in New York and Los Angeles, PS 122 and Highways Performance Space, both of which continue to be hubs for creativity and change. A fierce defender of the First Amendment and an uncompromising figure for LGBTQ rights and the rights of marginalized people for more than four decades, Tim Miller is an artist who performs to change the world for the better. by @millertale

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a month ago

I am super excited about the feature-length documentary about me and my work "Tim Miller Citizen Artist: Performing Stories to Change the Ending" that will have its world premiere at the Kansas City International Film Festival on September 19. The directors Heather Carver and William Horner are superstars - their first feature documentary is the only film on Pedro Zamora- and were a total joy to work with. What a wild three plus years it has been working with them on the film. We had so many adventures journeying from my parents bedroom in the house I grew up in where I came out to them to marching with No Kings protests in downtown LA. There are wonderful interviews about my work with Tony Kushner, Moisés Kaufman and many other great folks. The film is just beginning its adventure and will hopefully get to your town's film festivals! Thanks to Bill and Heather, editor Zoë Calsyn, all the fabulous crew, and everyone who participated in the film! I love this foto on the poster. (Photo credit Kirk Winslow) One of my earliest performance shots. 20 years old, my name spray painted on my chest and ready to queerly shake things up.
"Citizen Artist explores the life and career of the internationally acclaimed performance artist Tim Miller who, over his long career made crucial early performances about gay identity and HIV/AIDS, fought a free speech case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court as one of the "NEA Four," and co-founded two groundbreaking performances spaces, on in New York and one in Los Angeles which continue to be hubs for creativity and change. He uses his creative work to fight for social change and human decency. A fierce defender of the First Amendment and an uncompromising figure for LGBTQ rights and the rights of marginalized people for more than four decades, Tim Miller is an artist who performs to change the world for the better." #queerperformance @profaloha.mizzou by @millertale

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2 months ago

The innocent man executed by Trump's ICE goons this morning in Maine has just been identified as Joan Sebastian Guerrero. Here is a bit of his story. SAY HIS NAME. If you voted for POS *Rump you helped murder this legal immigrant from Colombia today in front of his 3 year old daughter. by @millertale

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3 months ago

Since rewatching Hamnet, I have been thinking a lot about my 5th Grade production of Hamlet that I did at Macy Elementary in La Habra, CA with me as Hamlet. Finally found the program. What a curious 10 year old gay boy I was. I still have my costume!
From my performance "Us"
My profound love and attraction for things English reached their peak with my production in Fifth Grade of Hamlet. My teacher Mrs. Bush - one of only two positive associations I have with that word “bush”- encouraged me in my desire to direct and star in a 60 minute adaptation of Shakespeare’s play. (I had wanted to turn it into a musical but she had dissuaded me.) I had an ulterior motive though; I was in love with my desk mate David Suggs and I figured if I staged Hamlet I could cast him as Horatio and he would have to follow my direction and hug & kiss me at the end of the play!
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The desire to play the Prince of Denmark and speak those killer words or the desire to wear tights and be cradled by David Suggs as Horatio with his long blond hair falling over his forehead? I don’t know. Maybe they came at exactly the same moment. Art and sex? The word and the deed? Everyone got in on the act to help ten-year-old Tim do Hamlet. Mrs. Bush gave us vast amounts of class time for my increasingly tyrannical rehearsals. My Brother nixed my choice for incidental music for the play –the overture from Hello Dolly- and found the right bit of Purcell for the court processional at Elsinore. My Mom sewed the costumes for the production, including my elegant black belted tunic which went over my sister’s tights from Modern Dance and a frilly white shirt from one of my mom’s pantsuits. My mom finished it all off by ripping a shiny metal medallion off a huge holiday gift box bottle of Seagrams and then hanging it on a bathtub chain around my neck. (Thus learning at a young age how crucial it is to accessorize.)
#queerperformance by @millertale

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5 months ago

This is "Spilt Milk" a performance about Harvey Milk that was part of a full-evening work SOME GOLDEN STATES.
I created Some Golden States in 1987. I was twenty-eight and my world was in complete chaos. That year AIDS began to take its toll on my closest personal circle with the first deaths of people who were my friends and lovers. I was constantly haunted by my own fears that I would soon be next. As if we were catching the last plane out of Lisbon in 1940, my partner at the time Doug Sadownick and I had moved to LA fleeing the cold panic and tightening noose in New York. We made this move to improve the quality of our lives but also partly in the hope we could be less besieged by the plague in California's sunnier climes. That never works does it?
That same year my hometown of Whittier , California was devastated by an earthquake. Whittier, the hometown of President Richard Nixon, has always existed as an archetypal place for me , somewhere off the Interstate between Brechts Mahagony and Wilders Our Town. Faced with the post-earthquake reality of such iconic sites as the Whittier Cinema in ruins, I felt my personal cosmology further frayed. The world and my place in it was feeling very precarious indeed.
Some Golden States is about dirt, California dirt in particular. Where I come from the dirty earth still lives, moves can shake your house down around you. Its the dirt in my metaphor-laden backyard -- which makes frequent appearances in my work as a Suburban Eden -- that is the primal site of birth, growth and killer tomatoes ready for the pasta. Dirt that I love, dirt that I plant seeds in, and rather naughtily in the show, dirt that I fuck as a horny teenager. With those grandiose intimations of mortality that the late 20s can bring even without a plague or earthquake in your vicinity, the piece is haunted by the dirt that we will all eventually become. My own first sober brushes with death are matched in the show by mortal blows to friends, heroes, idealism and possibility.
Fecund and feisty, the stage of Some Golden States not to mention the wheelbarrow that sits down stage right -- is strewn with the dirt into which I need to dig my toes. by @millertale

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5 months ago

I will be leading the Citizen Artist Reading Group exploring AIDS, Activism and Performance as part of the fantastic 2 year celebration of High Performance Magazine and the incredible contributions of Linda Frye Burnham and our much mourned Steven Durland organized by 18th Street Arts Center, the Getty Museum, Highways Performance Space & Gallery and the Performance Art Museum. Thanks to @marcuskuilandnazario & Michael Ano for organizing the Citizen Artist Reading Group, Just read the four short articles from High Performance at the links and then take part in the zoom room this Sunday May 17 from 10 AM to Noon PDT. The essay by Max Navarre is so wise and heartbreaking. Just reread it.
Art in the AIDies: An Act of Faith by Max Navarre
https://wayback.archive-it.org/.../09/art_in_the_aidi.php
Citizen Artist Reading Group
Sunday, May 17th | 10 AM – 12 PM
MEETING LINK IN BIO
Free + Open to the Public
High Performance magazine, and later The Citizen Artist anthology, documented and amplified the voices of artists working outside traditional institutions, embedding their practice in the fabric of civic life. By revisiting these groundbreaking publications, we aim to spark dialogue, collective memory, and action—drawing from a powerful lineage of artist-led civic engagement and radical experimentation.
The Citizen Artist Reading Group is a year-long inquiry into the intersections of art, politics, performance, and community. Meeting monthly from January–December 2026, the group will engage foundational and experimental texts that have shaped the fields of social practice, community-based performance, and art/life. Together, participants will explore themes ranging from feminist lineages and environmental interventions to activism, justice, and collective transformation.
All sessions are virtual and public.
Session 5 – May 17, 2026, 10:00-12:00 PM PDT
Readings:
It’s All I Can Think About: An Interview with Nancy Buchanan – Linda Frye Burnham & Steven Durland (p. 111)
Taking Back the Power: An Interview with Robbie Conal – Claire Peeps (p. 117)
Art in the AIDies: An Act of Faith – Max Navarre (p. 121)
Silence Still = Death – Lucy Lippard (p. 129) by @millertale

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5 months ago

Had an incredible weekend with performance artist Tim Miller at SCU. Tim led an intimate performance creation workshop with students and then performed A BODY IN THE O in the Fess Parker Theatre, a moving and hilarious show about queer rights in America and the importance of social justice movements. Tim’s work continues to provoke, challenge, and inspire. Grateful to all the campus partners and everyone who showed up for the performance. @millertale @scutheatreanddance @scu_cah @scuinclusiveexcellence @scugnsx @scuoml @scupresents #queerperformance #santaclarauniversity #socialjustice taken in Santa Clara University by @millertale

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6 months ago

Hi Bay Area Folks! I am performing in Bay Area soon at Santa Clara University on April 18. FREE with RSVP Thanks so much to @benjamingillespie3 for making this happen. I am performing at the Fess Parker theatre at SCU who starred in my fave TV show as a littlw boy Daniel Boone. I am on a roll . I have been performing this winter at Eva Marie Saint Theatre, Arthur Miller Theatre and now Fess Parker Theatre. SF folks, Cal Train stops right at edge of campus! by @millertale

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6 months ago

Hi Bay Area Folks! I am performing in Bay Area soon at Santa Clara University on April 18. FREE with RSVP Thanks so much to Benjamin Gillespie for making this happen. I am performing at the Fess Parker theatre at SCU who starred in my fave TV show as a littlw boy Daniel Boone. I am on a roll . I have been performing this winter at Eva Marie Saint Theatre, Arthur Miller Theatre and now Fess Parker Theatre. @benjamingillespie3 by @millertale

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6 months ago