Tim Miller's Show Goes On at Bryn Mawr College

Performance artist Tim Miller, who was originally supposed to host a workshop at Villanova before the school uninvited him, gave a performance-based lecture at on Thursday. 

Attended by about 75 people, the lecture was in advance of Friday’s workshop performance, "Speak The Truth Even If Your Voice Shakes," by a group of Villanova, Bryn Mawr and Haverford students who worked with Miller this week. 

“I mean, if they don’t want him, we’re happy to have him,” said Bryn Mawr student Meredith Cobb, a sophomore, who was at Thursday’s event with friends Julia Regan Fanelli and Colleen Hansbury, both juniors. 

The three found out about the event . At the time, Villanova President Rev. Peter M. Donohue told the Philadelphia Inquirer he canceled the workshop because of subject matter and not because of Miller's sexual orientation.

“I like supporting artists that get kicked out of other places,” Cobb said.

“It feels very ‘Bryn Mawr’ to me,” Hansbury added.

Miller was introduced by Heidi Rose, an associate professor in Villanova’s Communication Department, who had initially invited Miller to teach the workshop there. 

She described Miller’s work as “fierce,” and said she hadn’t realized what a great teacher he was until this week.

Miller’s performance-based lecture was well received by the audience.

He began with a four-minute birth piece, an origin creation myth that described the joining of a “queer sperm and lesbian ovum.”

He talked about seeing performance art by feminists in downtown Los Angeles and learning about personal narrative from them—making sure to add he wasn’t just saying that because he was at Bryn Mawr College. 

“We don’t only get inspired by people who are the same as us,” Miller said.

Miller also talked about losing his National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, along with three other students, and the ensuing Supreme Court battle.

He said he’s rewarded when an 18-year-old, fresh out of a hometown, approaches him and says, “You know, Mr. Miller sir, I was raised really conservatively, and I think you should have all the rights of straight people.”

“Obviously, I have a real abiding faith in performing,” Miller said. “It can not just make us feel better, but it can change the world… Of course, I also include the possibility that I’m totally full of s---.”

History professor Sharon Ullman, who coordinates the gender and sexuality program at Bryn Mawr College, said she saw Miller perform at InterAct in Philadelphia last week and said a good crowd turned out for Thursday’s performance. She is also looking forward to Friday’s student performance from the workshop, which included 16 students, 11 of whom are from Bryn Mawr and Haverford colleges. 

“There was a real will to support this,” Ullman said.

Rose, the Villanova professor who had invited Miller there, said she was devastated at first.

“The whole thing sort of took on mythic proportions,” Rose said. "I experienced this roller coaster of emotions."

But Bryn Mawr jumped in quickly and positively, and Rose said she and Villanova students were made to feel welcome there.

“I am an eternal optimist—this is the beginning of a really good friendship,” Rose said. “It’s like magic. These students never would have known each other otherwise… It’s inspiring stuff. It’s creative, honest, poignant, funny and fierce.”

Rose’s colleague Gordon Coonfield, also an associate professor in Villanova’s Communication Department, said he came in part to support Rose, in part because of his long-standing interest in performance art and in part to “oppose the nonsense in Villanova’s official position on this, in abandoning and vilifying him.”

“It was a great show,” Coonfield said. “The way he blends performance and lecture is a great teaching model.”

Afterward, Miller called Villanova’s decision “wrong and dumb and pointless.”

“It’s not my freedom they took away—they took away their students’ freedom,” Miller said. 

This week involved a great group of students from three schools, he added. 

“It’s been an experience,” he said of this week’s workshop. “They’ve created a beautiful, charged piece with deeply developed stories. It’s going to be really moving, and I’m excited.”