At Highways, Miller Isn’t a Middle-of-the-Road Director

Tim Miller has a habit of being at the forefront in whatever situation he finds himself.

Take, for example, his current situation. As co-artistic director (with Linda Frye Burnham) of the multicultural, multimedia performance space called Highways, where his new performance work, “Stretch Marks,” plays weekends through August, Miller is leading the charge for, in his words, “a new community.”

In the two months since opening the doors of the Santa Monica facility, Miller and Burnham have provided an already feted venue for experimenters in dance, poetry, photography and performance art.

Leading the way--and in unexpected ways--has seemingly always come natural to him. During his high school days in his native Whittier, he was lecturing his fellow students on D. W. Griffith. In the late 1970s, he landed in the heart of the pulsating New York avant-garde scene at 19. He took it by storm.

He co-founded the noted P.S. 122 performance space. The Village Voice dubbed him a 1982 “Hero in the Arts.” He was on the bill of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 1984 Next Wave festival in a big show titled “Democracy in America.”

But the ride was too much, too fast. Miller felt, by his own admission, a “comedown” after “Democracy,” a sense that bigger was not necessarily better. Flying high, then dropping back to Earth, is at the heart of “Stretch Marks.”

Miller’s new work isn’t meant to simply track the last two years of his life.

“In New York in the early and mid-’80s, AIDS was an apocalypse,” said Miller. “ ‘Stretch Marks’ (in which Miller mulls over the meaning of turning 30, which he did last year) is also about that, but then goes on to propose certain actions that people can take. At the same time, it ends on a deliberately mysterious note.”

This reflects the two sides to Miller’s sensibility--two sides he readily admits to.

There is Miller the elusive, ironic observer of his flawed self. He slightly cringes when a visitor notes how a whimsical “Stretch Marks” costume/set piece, which has him strapped to a cut-out airplane, resembles Jesus on the cross. He himself has a hard time explaining the ending, which involves miniature trains and a renewed sense of hope.

“Just when people think I’ve fallen into agitprop,” he said, “I’ll jump into some wild, personal reflections.”

Then there is Miller the activist and public artist. In the middle of “Stretch Marks,” out pops a manifesto that Miller wrote and read during a vigil held last year outside the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center--a vigil organized to demand, among other things, an AIDS ward at the facility. Miller’s is an unabashed call to action, including such comments as: “Maybe it’s time for all art to be quite useful.”

Yet, even in a crisis, is it wise or good for art to be a means to a particular end? “I think the key word in that statement is maybe ,” he quickly replied. “It qualifies it somewhat. Plus, I was responding to Oscar Wilde’s remark that all art is quite useless. Utility contains a great realm within which one can roam. And, today, the notion of the isolated artist is over.

Thus, after “Stretch Marks,” Miller will be moving on to collaborative work. “I recently performed with minister Malcolm Boyd during one of his Sunday services at his Santa Monica (St. Augustine’s) church. Was that wild! It brought out all these Christian feelings inside me, and it got me thinking about duo collaborations. It’s the kind of thing I’m pondering in my Jesus years.”

Jesus years?

“My early 30s. It’s when Jesus performed his miracles.”