Hoping to Avoid a Split Decision

Not quite a Shakespearean love story. But Southland performance artist Tim Miller and his Australian lover, Alistair McCartney, could be torn apart by others nonetheless.

Their true-life tale unfolds tonight and Saturday in “Glory Box,” Miller’s witty, passionate one-man show presented by Rude Guerrilla Theater Company at the Empire Theater in Santa Ana.

“Ultimately this is a love story,” Miller, 42, said from Los Angeles of his achingly bittersweet slice of gay life, whose title is an Aussie term for hope chest.

Miller has a second not-so-hidden agenda too.

As a gay couple, McCartney and Miller cannot legally marry. Because McCartney is not a U.S. citizen and cannot gain permanent resident status by marrying Miller, he might have to leave the country in about a year when his student visa runs out.

And Miller, an internationally acclaimed performer and fourth-generation Southern Californian, might join him in Canada, Australia or Great Britain, where gay partners have broader immigration rights.

“The fact that I’m going to be forced to leave this country because I’m in essence not a full citizen really makes me angry,” Miller said.

“I want the audience to understand the sad and unfair fact that lesbians and gay men are second-class citizens in the United States. Alistair and I have dozens of heterosexual friends in the same (binational) situation and they get engaged and the red carpet is rolled out for them.”

If Miller is impassioned offstage, onstage he weaves a hot-wired, often hilarious web of personal vignettes about romance, relationships and sexual orientation, meant to engage, include and thoughtfully provoke.

One involves his childhood in Whittier. When he was 9 he walked to school in La Habra with a classmate and asked the little boy to marry him.

“Of course kids aren’t born bigots,” he said. “But the obvious results ensued a huge drama.”

Another scene is a nightmarish vision of being forcibly separated from McCartney at an international airport.

A seasoned performer, Miller teaches at UCLA and co-founded Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica. A member of the NEA 4, he successfully sued the federal government for payment of his 1990 solo performer fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, rescinded after controversy over the gay themes of his work.

In 1998, however, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned part of his case, ruling that “standards of decency” are constitutional standards for federal arts funding.

Miller first performed “Glory Box” in 1999. Since then he has performed it in many cities, including a production at the Laguna Art Museum a year ago.

Each time the piece resonates differently for Miller. “It’s a set of gorgeous variables,” he said.

He keeps his act sparse, though. The stage trappings are a large map and a hope chest.

And a call for human rights.

“Right now there’s a bill in Congress, HR 3650, called the Permanent Partners Immigration Reform Act. One of my chores will be asking the audience to call Congresswoman [Loretta] Sanchez in Santa Ana and Congressman [Christopher] Cox in Newport Beach and ask them to support the bill, ask them, ‘Why are you allowing gay citizens to be forced to leave the United States and have their families broken up?’

“You know even the hippest audience can be more activated. And I think when people come to the theater they are meant to be tenderized in a way. ‘Glory Box’ builds a lot of hope for the power of love--that our society will catch up with our loving hearts.”

SHOW TIMES

“Glory Box,” Empire Theater, 200 N. Broadway, Santa Ana. Today and Saturday, 8 p.m. $20 general admission; $15 students and seniors. (714) 547-4688.