1001 BEDS: Trans-sheets, trans-national, trans-formations...
performance by Tim Miller

Tim Miller "1001 Beds", a performance based on his brand new book just publsihed by University of Wisconsin Press, is a raucous and rowdy exploration of Miller's adventures in a performer's life fiercely lived in his travels across love, politics and art. From a gay teen's head-on collision with life in a sleazy hotel across the street from the Hollywood Bowl to an ecstatic vision of a sex-positive future on a mattress in a police holding cell, Miller's 1001 BEDS is a fiercely funny, sexy and border-crossing story about the transforming power of art, orgasm and the richness of queer identity lived out loud.

Since 1999, Miller has focused his creative and political high-beams on trans-national marriage equality and addressing the injustices facing lesbian and gay couples in America. These works are funny, sexy, and politically charged explorations of same-sex marriage and the struggle for immigration rights for lesbian and gay bi-national couples who try to maintain their relationships across boundaries.

"Tim Miller sings that song of the self which interrogates, with explosive, exploding, subversive joy and freedom, the constitution and borderlines of selfhood. . . . You think you don't need to hear such singing? You do! You must!" -Tony Kushner, playwright of Angels in America

Miller's technique — a frisky, half-lidded fidget on high alert to audience energies — gives way to flashes of poetic stillness that demonstrate how gracefully Miller has matured without losing either his inquisitive ardor or wicked humor.An almost shamanic spirit emerges when least expected, with striking immediacy.Think casual seduction concealing urgent consciousness-raiser, and you have the measure of "1001 Beds" and the nonpareil explorer of self and spirit
who recounts them with such potent assurance.
-- David Nichols, LOS ANGELES TIMES

Miller's performance style in 1001 BEDS, which manages to synthesize incantatory segments with looser sections that feel almost improvisational, lends itself well to tracing the ups and downs of someone whose life and loves have often been shoved into the margins of society -- and have also provided the key to his art. His travels for justice, art and personal revelation have led Miller into a lot of strange beds, but like most of us, what he wants most is one safe haven
to share with one other simpatico soul.
-- Kerry Reid, CHICAGO TRIBUNE

Miller's wily wordplay uses the metaphor of the bed as the stage for the beginning and end of life, and the site of the most important human experience in between -- love (or perhaps its simulacrum). Miller brought to even his angriest screeds that benign, self-mocking humor that has helped him survive across three contentious decades with his social activism intact. The writing itself is thoroughly engaging; this Whittier-born artist, and his vision of a more humbly democratic and gay-friendly U.S., remains as compelling as ever.
-- Anne Marie Welsh, SAN DIEGO UNION TRIBUNE

Tim Miller's new book of essays & performances 1001 BEDS

Directions to Morphy Hall from Pyle Center :
Turn right out the doors of the Pyle Center
Turn left tat the open quadrangle, past the fountain, and the clock tower on to Murray Street
Turn right before the Chazen Art Museum. Continue past museum entrance and steps.
Pass entryway marked Art.
Enter through glass doors on left.

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File Last Updated: December 1, 2006
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