For Tim Miller, A Stripped-Down Performance

If you have a problem with performance artist Tim Miller baring it all onstage, blame it on the University of Washington.

"I learned how to do naked performance at UW," declares Miller, who strips down in his new piece, "My Queer Body." "My complete college career was one year at the UW (1977-'78)."

Though he never graduated, Miller must have studied diligently. An open homosexual, he went on to become a leading gay cultural activist, well-traveled solo performer and dedicated member of ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). Based in Los Angeles, he also is co-director of Highways, an arts center in Santa Monica.

Most notoriously, however, Miller is one of the "NEA Four" - a quartet of provocative, controversial solo artists who fought back after the National Endowment for the Arts canceled grants that peer panels had approved for them in 1990. They later sued the federal government, charging their rights of privacy were violated when the grants were overturned.

Tomorrow, Miller performs at the UW for the first time since his college days. He presents "My Queer Body" at the HUB Auditorium at 7 p.m. (For information, call 543-2277.)

The piece, which has toured throughout the U.S. and recently to Australia, is quintessential Tim Miller: an unabashedly personal, political and playful exploration of Miller's own vividly sensual nature, and by extension, everyone else's. Or, as he puts it, "an evocative hymn to sexuality."

A lean, dark-haired man of 34, with the supple body of a trained dancer and a disarmingly ebullient personality, Miller tells in "My Queer Body" the humorous and poignant tale of his first adolescent romance. He also spins a fantasy of an orgiastic presidential inauguration in a post-homophobic world, quizzes audience members, and dares to shrug off his clothes.

Though Miller's strongest following is in the gay and lesbian community, he also draws positive responses from some mainstream critics. One Australia newspaper praised "My Queer Body" as "both an assertion and a celebration of homosexuality: joyous, tender, erotic, proud and funny."

Not everyone has cheered, however. When ex-NEA chairman John Frohnmayer killed solo theater grants to Miller, fellow gay artists Holly Hughes and John Fleck, and Karen Finley - all of whom deal with aspects of sexuality in their performances - the foursome achieved instant national celebrity. They became heroes to some, but targets for right-wing scorn as well.

Miller says he received numerous death threats as the result of the attention. "The scariest one," he recalls, "happened in Washington, D.C. I had spent a day at Ford's Theater, and then went to perform at another theater. There was a letter waiting for me from some crazy who said he'd kill me during the show that night . . . it was pretty terrifying."

More rational brickbats have been hurled by such eminent art critics as Robert Hughes, of Time magazine. He castigated the NEA Four as self-indulgent representatives of the "culture of complaint," rather than serious artists.

"People like Hughes are harder to respond to, for sure, than the right wing," Miller admits. "The critic of Time is an incredibly empowered person in this culture. But I think he's mounting the same old argument that has tried to frustrate political art, feminist art, art by people of color, for decades. They call what we do parochial, whiny, self-serving, preaching to the choir.

"In fact," asserts Miller, "this kind of art is about creating a sense of community, helping people survive. And who says we shouldn't complain about the mass suffering in this society, when so many people don't have jobs, the health-care system sucks, and a million people have HIV?"

As for the nudity in his performance, Miller says, "Someone could say about my show, `Why don't you just clean it up and keep your pants on?' But it's very organic what I do, and I feel it's important right now. I think the cultural battle in this culture is about the body - whether it's abortion rights, or gays in the military, or art. It's about some people's desire to control our bodies, and their panic when they can't."

Miller received funding again from the NEA in 1991. But the Clinton administration is continuing to fight the NEA Four suit, rather than settling.

The case may go to trial this summer, Miller reports. In the meantime, he tours "My Queer Body," and works on a new autobiographical piece "about being gay and HIV-negative."

"The main goal of my work," he summarizes, "is to acknowledge that we come together as humans in physical bodies. That's kind of miraculous, isn't it? That's why I'm totally into live performance, not video or film. I want to gather the audience, and bring them with me on a journey of pleasure, love and loss. It's that simple."