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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2010 > February > 02 > Entry
Review: Tim Miller’s ‘Lay of the Land’
When solo performer Tim Miller takes the stage, it seems like he can’t breathe. When Miller shifts into his performance persona, he always seems to be gasping for air.
The acting choice alternates between producing a sense of anxiety or exasperation as Miller’s streaming delivery goes on a journey through his take on what it means—and more importantly—how it feels to be queer in the US.
In Miller’s newest piece “Lay of the Land,” Saturday at Vortex, Miller targets his exasperation toward the ongoing battle over same-sex marriage. As is always true with Miller’s shows, the mix of comedy, pain and exuberant politics produces an unsettling mixture of empathy and indictment. “Lay of the Land” asks the now perhaps old, but still true feminist question: how do personal stories become political? And how do political decisions affect individual people trying to love each other and live together?
“Lay of the Land” focuses most directly on Miller’s experience in one the Californian same-sex couples able to marry during five months in the summer of 2008. But the show’s structure allows Miller to cover a huge swath of topics. “Lay of the Land” follows Miller’s participation in November 15 protests following the California Prop 8 anti-gay marriage vote.
Popping in and out of his role as activist in the street, Miller recalls vignettes from his life as a queer man. Perhaps the most intense recounts a harrowing moment as Miller’s father stood over his nine-year-old son, preparing to do an emergency tracheotomy on the kitchen table to remove chuck steak stuck in Miller’s throat
In one of many examples of the play’s web like writing, Miller relates the moment to his childhood hatred of baseball games—he saw the stadium as a tool for fathers to masculinize their gay sons—and Miller uses the steak as launching pad to discuss the queer issues, as he says, stuck in the throat of the nation. The many-tentacled writing can be dizzying to follow, but it’s fascinating in its scope.
Reflecting “Lay of the Land’s” title, Miller offers a stunningly broad view of the place of queer Americans in the national landscape. From an ode to Iowa — the state Miller calls the freest of the free after its 2009 unanimous State Supreme Court ruling allowing same-sex marriage—to his queer ode to state university mascots, Miller surveys the variety of American positions on gay and lesbian issues in even the most unlikely of places. After seeing “Lay of the Land,” no audience member will ever look at the University of Wisconsin’s hyper-muscular Bucky the Badger the same way again.
“Lay of the Land” is unabashedly political. Whether one agrees or disagrees with Miller’s positions, it would be nearly impossible to remain conscious through this show and not rethink gay rights in the US. And it would be impossible to sleep while Miller gasps and entertains.
Kudos to the Vortex for their long-time commitment to bringing this important artist back to Austin again and again.
Clare Croft is an American-Statesman freelance critic.
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