“Tim Miller’s new performance piece at the Richard Christiansen Theater begins with the artist as a young man, choking on a piece of backyard beef in suburban Los Angeles and fearing that the knife approaching his throat means that his dad is about to perform an emergency tracheotomy. From such terrifying childhood experiences are radical performance artists born.”
So begins Chris Jones’s tantalizing Chicago Tribune review of performance artist Tim Miller’s most recent performances of Lay of the Land when it hit Chicago a couple of weeks past.
Miller, once infamous as part of the NEA Four (who were defunded when the late Sen. Jesse Helms protested the content of their work), has been creating and touring for many years now, most recently in Ithaca for about the last five years.
Kitchen Theatre is giving area lovers of theater and queer identities three chances to experience Tim’s magic this weekend. (We recently learned, however, that unlike most of Tim’s work, there is no nudity. Still, Tim is quite fine with clothes on as well.)
Performances are Thur April 1 (7:30), Fri Apr 2 (8) and Sat Apr 3 (8). Tickets are $17-19, available at Ticket Center Ithaca (607.273.4497) and the door. An $11 student rush ticket is also being offered.
In addition, Tim will be giving a workshop on creating solo/personal performance at Cornell’s Schwartz Center Fri Apr 2 (12:20 to 2:15). For more contact Jim Self at 607.254.2743.
As the Kitchen folks put it:
“Lay of the Land is Tim Miller’s saucy, sharp-knifed look at the State of the Union during a time of trial. Careening from his sexy on-the-road misadventures, to Marriage Equality street protests, to the electoral assaults on gay folks all over the country, Lay of the Land subversively exposes the truths of gay life as one of being on trial, on the ballot, and on the menu.
“The newest of Miller’s performances, Lay of the Land is a fierce and funny examination of citizenship and a ‘lay’ in all kinds of ways: a sex-assignation, a queer citizenship map, and, of course, a narrative ballad with a recurrent refrain (Miller’s favorite way-down-the-list definition for ‘lay’! It is also an uncensored, no-holds-barred performance that includes frank language.”