Contact:

Sarah Ray

802-443-5794

sray@middlebury.edu

Posted: October 31, 2001

MIDDLEBURY,

VT - Internationally-acclaimed performance artist Tim

Miller will perform his latest work, “Glory Box,” on Sunday,

Nov. 11, at 7 p.m. in the Middlebury College McCullough

Student Center on Old Chapel Road off Route 30. The show is

free, and no advance reservations are necessary.

In

a series of comic and provocative episodes, Miller details

his struggle to keep his Australian lover in the United

States and explores the challenges of love, marriage and

immigration rights for gay people. The Village Voice hailed

Miller for his “gift for letting one topic open surprising

doors onto a multitude of others; his works are as canny and

complex as they are charming.”

Although

the performance centers on the particular issue of gay

immigration rights, it leads the audience into an

examination of the human heart. In “Glory Box,” named for

the Australian term for “hope chest,” Miller conjures an

alternative repository for the memories, loves, hopes and

dreams of gay people.

Since

gay couples in America are denied the immigration rights

routinely given to heterosexual married couples, Miller has

some notable dramas to recount in his story. From his

hilarious grade school playground battles over wanting to

marry another boy to the bittersweet challenges of adult

relationships, “Glory Box” culminates with Miller’s

harrowing experience of having his partner torn from him at

an international airport.

“Unless

America grows up quick and changes these bigoted unfair

laws, in order to maintain our relationship, Alistair and I

will probably be forced to leave the U.S. and seek political

refuge in a civilized country like Canada, Australia or

England, where they have immigration rights for bi-national

gay couples,” said Miller.

Hailed

for its humor and passion, Miller’s solo theater serves as

an artistic, spiritual and political expression of his

identity as a gay man. His past work includes “My Queer

Body” (1992), “Naked Breath” (1994), “Fruit Cocktail”

(1996), and “Shirts & Skin” (1998), which is based on

his book published by Alyson Press. Miller’s performances

have been presented throughout North America, Australia and

Europe at such venues as the Yale Repertory

Theater,

London’s

Institute of Contemporary Art, the Walker Art Center in

Minneapolis and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

In

1990, Miller was awarded a Solo Performer Fellowship from

the National Endowment for the Arts, but his grant was

overturned. Miller and three other solo artists whose grants

were also overturned on the basis of content became known as

the NEA Four, and with help from the American Civil

Liberties Union, successfully sued the federal government

for violation of their First Amendment rights. They won a

settlement in which the government paid them the amount of

their rescinded grants as well as all court costs. Though

the Supreme Court overturned part of Miller’s case in 1998,

determining that “standards of decency” are constitutional

criterion for federal funding of the arts, Miller has vowed

“to continue fighting for freedom of expression for voices

of diversity.”

Miller

is co-founder of two performance spaces: Performance Space

(P.S.) 122 on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and Highways

Performance Space in Santa Monica, Calif.

This

performance is presented by GLEAM (Gay and Lesbian Employees

at Middlebury), the Middlebury office of institutional

diversity, and the women’s and gender studies program. For

more information, contact Jennifer Ponder of the Middlebury

College dance department at 802-443-5822.