Dixon Place Presents Tim Miller's ROOTED

Dixon Place (Ellie Covan, Founding & Artistic Director) is pleased to present Rooted on Saturday, October 14 at 9:30pm and Saturday, October 21 at 7:30pm, by the internationally acclaimed performance artist Tim Miller. Miller shares stories of his family trees and the hidden gay histories that live among the branches. Mixing sex and politics, humor and hope, Miller charts the growth of queer citizenship in America and the new challenge of being rooted in Resistance to today's Trumped-up political environment. Rooted, will be performed at Dixon Place (161A Chrystie Street). Tickets are $20 in advance, $22 at the door, and $18 for seniors and students. Ticket can be purchased by visiting www.dixonplace.org or by calling 866-811-411.

Rooted is about New York history and Miller's family stories that plant him in the Empire State with stops along the way at a NYC wedding day, a queer history of hurting hearts, the Department of Homeland Security, the DNA roots that lead Miller to Central NY, and an 80s power rock epiphany on a NY farm road in Yates County. Rooted is a funny and charged story of the times we are living in.

"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, author of Angels in America

"I am calling on the ancestors to help me deal with our current American mess," Tim says. "If my great great grandpa Billy Angell in Jerusalem, NY in 1861 could join the NY 44th regiment when he was 18 years old and deal with a civil war that would kill almost a million Americans in the struggle against the same white supremacists that now again fill DC, then I can face my own queer struggles ahead. Fasten your seatbelts. Plant your feet. Get rooted in your history, root your resistance and be ready for these rocky times."

Tim Miller is an internationally acclaimed performance artist. Miller's creative work as a performer and writer explores the artistic, spiritual and political topography of his identity as a gay man. Hailed for his humor and passion, Miller has tackled this challenge in such pieces as POSTWAR (1982), COST OF LIVING (1983), DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA (1984), BUDDY SYSTEMS (1985), SOME GOLDEN STATES (1987), STRETCH MARKS (1989), SEX/LOVE/STORIES (1991), MY QUEER BODY (1992), NAKED BREATH (1994), FRUIT COCKTAIL (1996), SHIRTS & SKIN (1997), GLORY BOX (1999), US (2003) 1001 BEDS (2006), LAY OF THE LAND (2009), and ROOTED (2016). Miller's performances have been presented all over North America, Australia, and Europe in such prestigious venues as Yale Repertory Theatre, the Institute of Contemporary Art (London), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and the Brooklyn Academy Of Music. He is the author of the books SHIRTS & SKIN, BODY BLOWS and 1001 BEDS, which won the 2007 Lambda Literary Award for best book in Drama-Theatre. His solo theater works have been published in the play collections O Solo Homo and Sharing the DeliriuM. Miller's newest book 1001 BEDS, an anthology of his performances, essays and journals, was published by University of Wisconsin Press in 2006. Miller has taught performance at UCLA, NYU, the School of Theology at Claremont and at universities all over the US. He is a co-founder of two of the most influential performance spaces in the United States: Performance Space 122 on Manhattan's Lower East Side and Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, CA.

Miller has received numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1990, Miller was awarded a NEA Solo Performer Fellowship, which was overturned under political pressure from the Bush White House because of the gay themes of Miller's work. Miller and three other artists, the so-called "NEA 4", successfully sued the federal government with the help of the ACLU for violation of their First Amendment rights and won a settlement where the government paid them the amount of the defunded grants and all court costs. Though the Supreme Court of the United States decided in 1998 to overturn part of Miller's case and determined that "standards of decency" are constitutional criterion for federal funding of the arts, Miller vows "to continue fighting for freedom of expression for fierce diverse voices." Since 1999, Miller has focused his creative and political work on marriage equality and addressing the injustices facing lesbian and gay couples in America. Says Miller, "I want the pieces to conjure for the audience a site for the placing of memories, hopes, and dreams of gay people's extraordinary potential for love." After a nine-year stint in New York City, in 1987 Miller returned home to Los Angeles, California where he was born and raised. He currently lives there with his husband Alistair McCartney in Venice Beach. www.TimMillerPerformer.com