By Joan Lipkin
St. Louis friends may recall our bringing gay performance artist Tim Miller to St. Louis years ago to help launch our AC/DC Series at the late St. Marcus Theatre with his groundbreaking piece My Queer Body. It rocked our theatre community and its censorial overseers.
The printer didn’t want to print the flier, the post office didn’t want to deliver it, and the building inspector threatened to shut us down.
But we prevailed, and Tim’s performance, which did indeed involve nudity, was one of the most popular in our almost ten-year series.
Yes, the nudity. And why not? He had a beautiful dancer’s body, and his unapologetic body was its own kind of queer text.
But he also had a dazzling command of language and a warmth and humanity that reached every seat in our sold-out houses. And he told stories to reclaim the validity of the queer body, its history and its challenges.
Since we first worked with Tim, his star has rocketed. He has performed in countless venues and worked with students all over the country to help them access their stories.
Filmmakers Bill Horner and Heather Carver have spent ten years creating a documentary about Tim and his work, and it is a special treat that it will have its St. Louis premiere on Sunday, Nov. 8 at 3:30 p.m. at B&B Theatres Creve Coeur West Olive 10, as part of the St. Louis International Film Festival’s Leon and Mary Strauss Documentary Spotlight.
So grab some brunch and join us Sunday to see this film, which features many commentators, including Tony Kushner and me, and see why Tim is one of our leading and most influential performance artists.
Heather, Bill and I would love to see you, and we will be doing a post-show conversation after the screening. The film is paired with Couture to the Max, about young fashion designer Max Alexander.
Couture to the Max. Photo courtesy of SLIFF.
Citizen Artist explores the life and career of the internationally acclaimed performance artist Tim Miller, who over his long career gave the first known onstage performance about HIV/AIDS, fought a free-speech case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court as one of the “NEA Four,” and founded two groundbreaking performance spaces, one 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 champion of 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. (Courtesy of SLIFF)
Info and tickets: festivals.cinemastlouis.org
Photo courtesy of SLIFF.
