Critical Relations: The Artist and Scholar in Conversation

On April 27, 2002, the University of Minnesota sponsored a symposium on creative relationships between performing artists and scholarly critics. Among the panelists were solo performance artist Tim Miller and his collaborator David Román, professor of English at the University of Southern California, and Cornerstone Theater artistic director Bill Rauch and his coworker Sonja Kuftinec, professor of theater at the University of Minnesota.

Tim Miller and David Roman in Dialogue

MILLER My connection with David began here in Minneapolis in 1990—a crucial year in my life. The so-called culture wars of the "NEA Four" (myself, Karen Finley, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes) blew up at the time I was performing at the Walker Arts Center. I flew here in June of 1990 from the Sixth International AIDS conference in San Francisco, where I had just been beaten up and arrested, and the director of the Walker was incredibly annoyed with me. There was a question whether I was going to make it, because I was in jail, which presenters hate. But I got here, was collected, and we went right to a demonstration in St. Paul. Then and only then we went to the theater to do a quick tech of the show. Somehow in that context, I think the next day—

ROMAN It was Gay Pride in Minneapolis.

MILLER We met at Loring Park. And that feels like a perfect way to imagine the collaboration, dialogue, discussion we've been having over the last twelve years. So we're going to focus on a few of the places and many different ways we've negotiated this dimension of our relationship over time.

ROMAN I was a little nervous about this conversation because although the relationship between us as artist and scholar/critic has been fruitful, there have been tensions. Tim and I had to carefully revisit our history to make sure it was OK to do this.

I'll begin by stating that I'm one of those academics who takes pride in being an academic. I feel no shame in saying that I'm a scholar and even a critic.

As I was finishing my Ph.D., the NEA Four broke. I remember thinking that feminists had written a lot about the work of Holly Hughes and Karen Finley, but there was virtually nothing on gay male performance. I had just seen Tim perform for the first time, and I thought, "Why isn't anyone writing about this? Oh, I have a Ph.D. This might be my role." I began to write about queer performance, not just gay male but queer performance in general. It became my mission.

The immediate challenge I faced was to find alternatives to simply defending the work in terms of its artistic merit. I found that the most interesting way to engage with the work was actually to talk with the artist. The conversations that I had with Tim, Holly Hughes, and others helped me develop my critical voice.

Tim and I embarked on a collaboration called "Preaching to the Converted," a dialogue we published in the May 1995 Theatre Journal responding to charges against community-based work. The article was less about me unpacking Tim's work and more about a way for us to talk about our shared convictions.

MILLERI hate the idea that the artist is a woolly mammoth from the natural history museum...