The Artmaker as Active Agent: Six Portraits

By Susan Monagan

CHAPTER 7: JENNIFER MILLER

Figure 7.1. Circus Amok.

Background

If you had an option… to make a circus that would be like queer and political and free and the music was fantastic and the colors were great why would you choose something else?

Jennifer Miller has created her reputation in the New York City performing arts scene as the director of Circus Amok, a one-ring circus that travels around the parks of the city giving free performances of its blend of agit-prop politics and queer identity while demonstrating outstanding technical precision and craft.

Miller was raised in a social and personal milieu that blended politics with cultural expression:

I was raised in a liberal progressive family, Quaker by Jewish people practicing Quaker and that social protest involved a certain amount of outdoor sign-holding activity. So it’s politics and it’s like outdoor performance in that way. And then I got into circus stuff when I was young and I … very easily got into political theater. My early theater mentors, sort of the first people who asked me to do things with them were doing outdoor pageants. Outdoors, we would commemorate Hiroshima and Nagasaki was one of the first things I did and Brecht plays indoors. So that was the theater I grew up on. Bread and Puppet came around.

Miller identified as a lesbian and, perhaps more importantly, with “queer” culture and connected with the cultural expressions of sexuality outside the mainstream and their small and big “P” political ramifications.

And the queer performance stuff was always, you know totally influencial so not just in having the queer stuff and the transgendered representations but going for a heightened, campy sensibility sometimes … it’s a voice. It’s a weapon in that it’s a piece of media right? It’s a language. It’s a character…it’s … another voice in that statement of resistance. And it feels like a personal, and it feels like a warrior stance

In the downtown New York City theater scene of the 1980’s, Miller found stylistic mentors among outstanding actors and directors, many of whom were suffering through the AIDS health crisis as well as the politicization of art funding known as “The Culture Wars”. She is, in her words, “following in a lineage” of theater artists for whom there is no boundary between personal, interpersonal, electoral and cultural politics and for whom theatrical forms and traditions provide an expressive and entertaining medium for exploring those power relationships.

Ethyl Eichelberger…and Charles Ludlam and … [the] lesser known people that you know you’d go to see at the Pyramid Club in the middle of the night who were just so boldly irreverent. And at that time it was so much about surviving: you know queer and out and going forward and making jokes and singing songs while they themselves were dying and so many other people were dying.

The Work

Mark Sussman, in his article “A Queer Circus: Amok in New York,” in Jan Cohen-Cruz’ anthology, “radical street performance”, describes Circus Amok as:

A normal one-ring traveling circus with drag queen clowns, papier-mache animals instead of live ones, concerns about the quality of everyday New York life and utopian visions of a world with less homophobia and more fashion accessories made from the finest recycled materials. (Sussman, p. 263)

Stylistically, the Circus reflects Miller’s own influences:

Circus Amok is … reinventing the circus form, borrowing drag fantasy from Charles Ludlam’s Theater of the Ridiculous, large-scale transformation and puppet-animal acts from Bread and Puppet Theater’s Domestic Resurrection Circus, and the outdoor bally and verbal rhythm and repertoire from the Sideshow, as well as an acrobatic movement vocabulary from post-modern dance. (Sussman, p. 264)

Circus Amok began performing at downtown, indoor venues in 1989 but in 1994 decided to take the show out of theaters and into public spaces throughout the city, particularly in the city’s economically depressed neighborhoods.

Three dancers on stilts … burst through the magenta velour curtains in giant flame-colored costumes and hurtle toward the audience. The crowd sits, stands and sprawls in a half-circle, separated from the Circus Amok traveling ring by the foot-high painted plywood circular curb, its portable backstage made by a quickly assembled steel scaffolding proscenium masked by curtains and brightly painted canvas. Some adults have brought lawn chairs. Kids, many of them attentive audience members throughout the day of stage setup and performer warm-ups, press close to the edge, sometimes spilling onto the stage floor. We are in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, in a small, paved park beneath the entrance to the bridge to Manhattan. (Sussman, p. 262)                

Circus Amok creates a single, new show for each theatrical season, which typically runs during the summer months. Thematically, the show revolves around an overarching, politically-loaded issue. In 2003, the show addressed “Homeland Security” and the random harassment of immigrants, unlawful detention and the Patriot Act. 2004’s show addressed the encroachment on education and learning of school testing via the federal “no child left behind” initiative. Within these broad themes, Miller and her company create a series of skits that highlight the acrobatic skills of the company. For instance, one skit in 2004 revolved around “The Liberty Sisters”: two men and one woman, all dressed as women in red, white and blue 1940’s style dresses with wigs, and drawing cultural associations with the Andrews Sisters and other sisters groups of the World War II wartime era. During their complex and difficult juggling routine, the banter revolved around the troops stationed in Iraq.

Performing outdoors and for free, where the stage may, at any moment cease to be the focus of an audience’s interest, required an especially flexible theatrical form that could use spectacle, music and tricks to draw attention to the performers in the ring. (Sussman, p. 266)

Miller talks about the mostly technical challenges of working in an outdoor space while sending a political message.

One has to sort of simplify for this outdoor work. We can’t have a lot of complex text, first of all, cause people can’t hear it and they won’t stay and listen to it. But we get to the topics through a combination of stuff that I’m feeling … I have to be connected to it enough to be able work with it for months on end.

And if it’s a big crowd and in those places they’ll be close together and even those things make a difference. Practical things in outdoor theater that make a difference like, the light, the shade, the weather, the comfort so, and the space … If there’s no enclosure around it’s going to be harder to get the energy going. Those things make a huge difference. If there’s a little of a sort of amphitheatrical thing then we’re lucky. There often isn’t. If there’s a highway going by we don’t want to be there. …

Circus Amok is an outdoor spectacle and, like WaterFire, treats the senses. The music and visual design of the costumes, sets and props are as essential elements to the attractive quality of this group as are the acrobatic skills of the members of the performing company. The Hungry March Band is also, along with the physical setting up of the ring itself, a key component in drawing attention to, and gathering people toward, each outdoor performance.

The brass band does a walking parade around the neighborhood before each performance, attracting an audience and arriving back at the stage with an explosive percussion piece for the entrance of the stilters. (Sussman, p. 265)

Miller continues to find challenges in creating a show that is attractive physically and formally and that has an explicit and implicit political message. The inherent attractiveness of the form allows for the moments of attention and the receptive attitude needed to plant seeds of political and social change. It also continues to be extremely demanding physically to perform at the level of technical excellence she demands of herself and her fellow performers.

That’s sort of fun for me. It’s sort of part and parcel of the form. And it’s nice to kind of whittle away to images that I think will trigger a kind of opening or questioning that I’m interested in.

When I suggested that, politics aside, going to a Circus Amok show is fun, Miller replied:

And that’s what keeps me doing it is that. That’s a really particular and special thing that the house lights are up – makes the experience very rich that we are gathering. It’s a celebration. It’s a festival. It’s a community gathering. I mean they’re so happy to be together in the park enjoying something that it creates a totally, totally fun day and it’s just great to be part of that.

The Meaning

The form and setting of Circus Amok preclude the use of nuance: statements need to be made with broad strokes and gestures, bright colors, flashy clothes and jumpy music. They also create the possibility of social change.

Yeah, I think it opens spaces. … it’s not that easy to read but it’s not challenging or scary to read: it’s weird and mysterious. I think it makes cracks in belief systems and even the belief system about what I’m going to see. Right? So it says surprise is happening, surprise is good. Wow. Free music. So I think it really subverts expectations in an interesting way that open people up and allows them to bring energy to the event.

Politically, Circus Amok is presenting two political agendas, one more passively and one more actively. Any Circus Amok spectator is accepting that men are costumed in dresses and wigs in women’s hairstyles or that Miller, herself, has a substantial and real, beard and mustache. In one skit, Miller stuffs a pair of socks down her pants and becomes one of the juggling Fratelli Brothers. Stylistically, then, the Circus challenges assumptions about acceptable gender roles and, by extension, sexual orientation. More overtly, through its verbal content, the Circus is addressing social justice issues and relationships of political power. Sussman spells out this two-pronged political agenda in his critique of a specific show Circus Amok did in the late-90’s.

The queerness is presented and set aside. It is normalized, not made the central issue, as are the life of the city, the distribution of money and resources, the attitude of the politically powerful toward the working poor…Circus Amok presents two messages at once: an overt one, concerning the fairness of tax laws and the injustice of the removal of the urban safety net; and a covert one, which shows (rather than tells) the range of genders and bodies that are possible despite and in the face of greater economic injustices, no matter what geographic, ethnic performance, or gender neighborhood one happens to inhabit. (Sussman, p. 270)

Miller sees the role of Circus Amok as being decidedly Agit Prop, a definition which despite its Soviet associations has come to refer to any cultural manifestation with an overtly political purpose. But whether Circus Amok is preaching to the choir or the masses depends entirely upon which neighborhood they’re in and who shows up to be in the audience. Though these conditions don’t fundamentally alter the composition of the show, they certainly play a substantial role, determining the tone of a stylistic form that allows for considerable improvisation and audience interaction.

In his influential book, Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam writes,

Of all the dimensions along which forms of social capital vary, perhaps the most important is the distinction between bridging (or inclusive) and bonding (or exclusive). Some forms of social capital are, by choice or necessity, inward looking and tend to reinforce exclusive identities and homogeneous groups…Other networks are outward looking and encompass people across diverse social cleavages… bonding social capital constitutes a kind of sociological superglue, whereas bridging social capital provides a sociological WD-40. (Putnam, p. 22-23)

Circus Amok provides a social “bonding” function through culture when they are performing for an audience familiar with their political and sexual orientation. In this case, the performance can be an energizing focal point of a broader social and political movement.

So when we’re in Tompkins Square Park … when it’s our fans, people know us, people who are used to seeing people like us out in the streets, then there’s a little more of a reinforcement of a common ideology and aesthetic going on. So there’s, “yeah, we’re all in this together.”

it gives to people a sense of solidarity, likemindedness even which is strength to continue an individual struggle… I think it’s a public reflection. It’s a public voice of ways of thinking that so many of us are thinking that are not getting any space in the public arena. So, just having dissenting voices out in public is just such a breakthrough in this cultural moment. It makes us feel like we’re not alone and not only with our voice but the voices of people around us that they’re feeling.

With the audiences less familiar with the culture Circus Amok represents, Miller sees potential for political activation based on shared social justice concerns. It is with these audiences that the Circus provides a “bridging” function.

we create a community bond through some of what we’re calling political issues that are issues of social welfare or of our survival together so we feel common bonds around a lot of those things and then the queerness is where we feel we’re communities getting to know each other in some ways.

Miller uniquely combines her personal identity and her political convictions in an art form that is accessible and entertaining and continues a rich tradition of politically-steeped performance.

Interaction

Figure 7.2

Miller has filled the role of “Artist as Analyst” as she has taken opportunities to teach what she describes as “Big Outdoor Political Circus Spectacle: Theory and Practice”, to students at CalArts and UCLA. Teaching has helped Miller understand the power and context of old theatrical traditions and forms that have addressed political imbalances and injustices through the attracting properties of humor and technical skill.

Yeah, it’s helpful to know along the way of preparing for these classes to … learn more about movements and companies that I didn’t know about and the way they approached you know processing what was going on culturally and politically in their moment. And just getting deeper into the popular theory stuff and you learn more schtick and you learn material. I mean a lot of it’s I get interested in the material stuff as well as the theory.

By teaching the theory and these forms to younger students, she is paying homage to her antecedents, strengthening her own practice, and passing on valuable expressive media. This analysis quickly leads Miller to action and to teaching students to interweave strands of political and artistic awareness and to connect performance with current events.

I think it goes under the category of freeing the performer and a lot of them get some sort of confidence and its fun help finding voice. And I try to do as much political indoctrination as I can! Absolutely. We make shows about what’s going on in their communities at the time that we’re in. I mean they did a great show this fall at UCLA all about the grocery strike and that led us to studying WalMart and the effect of WalMart on

The whole world

Yes exactly. … So I teach them to research. I teach them to read the newspaper. I teach them to find talking politically.

Miller attempts to place herself within a liberal, progressive, activist movement and to distinguish what she does as the leader of a cultural organization and as an artist with what she does as a citizen-activist.

But [there’s] so much debate about the existence of a particular left right now that I couldn’t say that we’re the cultural wing of the left. I mean I would have to say that we’re the cultural wing for supporting a lot of activist work. I mean I would like to think of us as working arm in arm with other people who are doing the really hard things, the grassroots level work, of actually organizing people to go on strike or to get legislation passed or to do the real fighting.

Together with other artistic groups, Circus Amok and Miller’s leadership have created a de facto activist climate that supports social change as well as one another’s efforts to affect it.

we can hook up with other groups that are working … but also their work will sometimes inspire us. So that’s also nice so we can feel like we’re a part of something that other people are following up on or doing their dance work on…Both groups of artists who are working with me or doing similar work: Great Small Works and other politically oriented groups and activist communities

Miller envisions a circus performance that is fully integrated into the grass roots political organizations that address the local issues of whatever neighborhood they’re performing in. The cultural performance gathers and energizes people and the political organizations channel that activation into a structure that works for change.

Of course, ultimately also it would be great to have, “and there’s a discussion over here about how to stop the incinerator in your community” … These are the grand visions. Also, working on building a midway from before where community groups and political groups can set up tables, colorful tables and hopefully that’s related to whatever we’re doing. And …we’ve gotten started…

Audience

Figure 7.3

Miller explains how she directs the process of collaboration in building the show along with members of the cast, her design team, and other creative partners upon whom she has come to rely. Miller holds the inner ring of “origination and responsibility”.

I will come up with sort of the theme and start talking about it amongst company members and other people and then a lot of great ideas will start pouring in. They all pour back to me and then I give assignments back out, often. So I’ll ask somebody to write a dialogue between the mayor and the superintendent or the mayor and the governor... And someone else to write a song, you know, about the four divas of deconstruction military terminology. And then some of them will just be visually oriented pieces between me and the designer. So it kind of starts here and goes back out and back in and back out.

Miller collapses Lacy’s categories of “collaboration and codevelopment” and “Volunteers and performers” because she collaborates with the performers to develop the piece. This process is typical in theater, especially that which centers around physical comedy. A successful show depends upon the capacity to change and adapt text and movement to reflect the actual strengths and weaknesses of the performers and the constraints and possibilities of the physical space. These variables are heightened in the theater of an outdoor circus.

Also, the outdoor circus as Circus Amok practices it -- though rehearsed with great precision -- relies on an improvisatory feel for its style. Despite its technical facility, it’s intended to feel a little ragged, with the charm of work operating in the “arte povera” vein. This style allows for greater accessibility to the performers by the “immediate audience”, who are invited by the cast to respond to, or comment upon, events on stage. This porous nature of the performance, though a necessary ingredient of the show, does not substantially change its composition. Miller and Circus Amok do not build pieces with communities, they bring a fully-realized piece into a community in order to provide an opportunity for connection and, as Miller describes it “getting to know one another”. Though Miller does not see her “immediate audience” as being true collaborators in performance, she does see their potential as collaborators in a broad social justice movement.

Miller’s decision, in the mid-1990’s, to extend her notion of audience, to broaden the reach of her political and cultural message, and to stretch her own skills as a performer, director, and producer was critical to establishing her reputation as someone who “walks the talk.”

Taking it outdoors was a risk, a move that meant rethinking the finances, the message, the live band and the role of gay imagery. How would the blurring of genres play in the inner city of Brooklyn? How would the embodiment of family entertainment by a corps of queer bodies play in a community garden in Harlem? … A greater tension is magnified here: the safety of the avant-garde inhabiting its own turf – in New York, “downtown” – versus the danger of touring experimental or explicitly political work to an audience that has not necessarily, asked to see that work. The challenge was to learn – or relearn how to perform for everyone, for a broader slice of the public sphere, and for kids and families. (Sussman, p. 265)

Circus Amok’s audience of “myth and memory” includes its fans and those others who rely on its capacity to support different visions of what is “normal”. It also includes those of the political and organizational wing of the liberal progressive movement who can share in the expression of their goals in a public arena.

Intention

Miller’s intention is front and center in her work. She does not disguise her biases and beliefs in abstractions but paints her politics in wide swaths of good and evil. The expressive form she has chosen makes simplicity essential, but what delights and moves a five-year-old, often resonates across the developmental spectrum.

Miller wants to do work that is physically demanding and that challenges her circus craft skills. She wants to present work through the Circus Amok company that is of excellent quality, whether it is juggling, stilt-dancing or tumbling. She believes that bringing older performing arts forms into a new context brings contemporary audiences an historical perspective on their social and political issues. Also, bringing live performance to neighborhoods that are underserved by non-commercial cultural events is an important value.

It is also important for Miller and other members of the Circus to be “out and proud” whether they are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered or not. The members of this company want the opportunity to test their courage, to be outrageous and irreverent in a public arena, exercising their rights to speak publicly and honestly and hone their voice and their message so that they make friends in the process. Miller is optimistic and believes in an alternative political universe that exists in the nooks and crannies of everyday life, particularly among the poor and disenfranchised. The development of this universe relies on getting out and being heard. In neighborhoods where what they are saying is “new,” Miller wants to:

make a space for it to be okay to be generous to not be homophobic to like to feel good to not have to be mean to the freaks and the fags but to be able to be nice to them and so we give people the opportunity, the space. They get to be able to be open, generous, tolerant.

If what we’re saying is new and if who we are is new than the response will be a little bit more of really just open eyed and mouth dropped and we might not feel that quite as much. It might not be “yeah, look at those, you know, big drag queens singin and dancing. Are those drag queens? I’ve seen those on television, amazing!” But I would have to say, it’s almost always rousing. It’s almost always a rousing applause by the end. I mean everybody loves a big stilt dance. Most people love to boo at the mayor. And this is what we do by using old popular, historically old popular forms, using juggling, using acrobats. I mean there’s like a visceral thrill everyone gets when someone flips, (gasps).

It is this opportunity and the resulting communications and connections that Miller feels “open up the avenue of action.”

Miller sees herself as following a liberal progressive tradition and its associated agenda of sharing access to power. Through art, Miller seeks to build awareness to the obstacles to this access and by bearing witness to the inequities as well as the promise presented by the democratic decision-making process.

Effectiveness

Like Pottenger, Miller is both daunted and inspired by the largeness of her vision of a more equitable world; her intentions are outsized and wholly integrated with her personal identity. Therefore, she has a great deal at stake in making sure her actions and activities are justified. She questions whether her efforts are really changing anything.

I mean who knows what makes change. We don’t know what makes change? But no activist can ever feel any kind of guarantee that what they’re doing is making change and they’re probably feeling despair 90% of the time. What are we doing out in the street? What has a march ever accomplished? You know. But then on the other hand you stop and you look back and you look at the people who came before you. And you try to think of all the little slogans about “one step at a time,” “nothing…” whatever! I’m not that good at remembering them! But people remind me of them all the time. That’s how change happens.

Miller is less conversant in the language of objectives, metrics and assessment than Pottenger or Bowers, which is reflective of the type of work she’s doing and the demands of her funding sources. Her work is still seen primarily as entertainment as opposed to providing a social service function. It appears that to be able to measure the effectiveness of her work through the realization of her goals and the meeting of her objectives, she will need to formalize her connections with local, grass-roots organizations in the neighborhoods of New York City and pay attention to the correlations between what she and they are doing and how they can reinforce one another’s activities. Miller will have to grow the organizational capacity of Circus Amok beyond the demands of its performances in order to meet this goal.

At the time being, Miller measures success in the ring. From the moment the Circus Amok truck pulls into a city park until the “rousing applause” that ends the show, Miller is hustling, directing, teaching, and performing – activities all driven by her implicit objective of changing the world.

Figure 7.4. Jennifer Miller.

Next: Chapter 8 - Doug Rice
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