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Performance artist Tim Miller helps students find power in personal stories

Tim Miller, a performance artist and writer known for his exploration of identity through humor and passion, worked with Auburn Theatre & Dance students this spring to create a performance like no other – because no one else could perform the deeply personal stories that made up the original work.

Through just one week of intensive planning and practice, Miller guided students on how to craft a performance inspired by personal stories, then perform them in “Body Maps” at the Telfair B. Peet Theatre for a live audience.

“The script is inside their hearts and heads, and it gets revealed over the week,” Miller said. “They're working with each other, and they're creating a piece that really is the piece they need to make. They won't always get to do that, but I think theatre will be stronger and more interesting if we encourage a wider variety of voices and invest in actors with agency to be primary creators.”

The prompt for the performance was: Find a moment in your life where you became who you’re supposed to be. Miller focuses on this idea to call forward the stories of when performers faced adversity within larger social or political structures.

Miller said the individual experience is a reflection of the world around us, and speaking truth to power with performance is an act of beautiful, intimate and honest resistance.

“It's extremely personal work, but it's also very social,” Miller said. “I've worked with literally thousands of people to generate an autoethnographic performance, something from their life with critical thinking, with an awareness of how this lands in the world, in your life, in society.”

Sh’kayla James, a sophomore in theatre, created a performance around her experience with mental and physical health issues as a student.

She found the experience similar to her work with Mosaic Theatre Company, which creates and performs original works around social issues. The theatre company devises performances for the public good, including work about vaccine confidence for older adults in the community.

James said in both the workshop and Mosaic Theatre Company, she was able to balance the power of her personal story with the universal truth of experiences for the audience.

“I like devising my own work because making work that matters to you can also give a voice to others,” James said. “In my piece, I chose not to be too specific on what it was because I wanted it to be up to the audience's interpretation based on whatever they were going through.”

During practice, Miller emphasized the importance of trusting yourself and knowing your story is worth being told. For the artist, this helps build confidence in their abilities and gives them a creative outlet.

James said the experience was challenging and rewarding, because it encouraged both confidence and vulnerability in her as an artist and as a person.

“Overall, being in ‘Body Maps’ has taught me how impactful vulnerability is for both the audience and personal growth,” James said. “In the future, I want to continue making and performing works that is honest and I want to keep pushing myself to grow as an artist and a person.”

At the end of the week, students performed a series of solo and collaborative acts that included family history, personal love stories and standing up to oppressive forces. Each spoke to a larger social theme, such as making the world better, letting love grow and stopping systems of abuse.

Miller said the experience not only makes better citizen artists, but better performers with the vision to find meaningful work throughout their career.

“Our birthright is creativity. It's our ability to make things happen,” Miller said. “I'm committed to encouraging not just artists, but citizens to perceive themselves as having stories that live inside them, that they have urgent, urgent, passionate narratives that want to come forward. Let's let people's voice be heard.”

Students also enjoyed a screening of the upcoming documentary about Tim Miller by Professor of Performance Studies Heather Carver and Curators' Distinguished Teaching Professor Bill Horner at the University of Missouri.

For more information about theatre programs, visit the Department of Theatre and Dance website.

Tags: Theatre and Dance Students Arts and Culture