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Jennifer Miller

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jennifer Miller
Born1961 (age 62–63)
United States
Occupations
  • Circus performer
  • writer
  • professor

Jennifer Miller (born 1961) is an American circus entertainer, writer, and professor at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. She has lived with a beard for most of her life.[1] She is a juggler and fire eater. Miller lives in New York City.

Biography

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Miller is the youngest daughter of two Quaker professors[2] and grew up in Connecticut and California. Miller became involved in the performing arts and theater while in high school, and was involved in the downtown dance scene in New York in the early 1980s. In her career as a performing artist, which has spanned over 20 years,[2] she has performed with numerous choreographers and dancers, several circus companies, and in the Coney Island SideShow. Miller has also collaborated on theatrical works with Sarah Schulman.[3]

In 1989, she established the acclaimed NYC political performance troupe Circus Amok.[4][5] She was also a focus of Tami Gold's documentary Juggling Gender, an exploratory piece addressing themes of androgyny, gender classification and identification, feminism, and femaleness through a singular focal character, Jennifer Miller herself.[6][7] Circus Amok has been the subject of numerous documentary films. Miller is widely recognized for her work and is the recipient of awards including the Obie, Bessie, BAX 10, and, most recently, the Ethyl Eichelberger Award. She currently teaches in New York at Pratt Institute, and has taught at several universities including UCLA, Cal Arts, Scripps College, Trinity/La MaMa Performing Arts Program and NYU.[8]

In 2010, Miller served as a co-hostess to Vaginal Davis' performance piece "Speaking from the Diaphragm" at Performance Space 122.[9]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Hornberger, Francine (April 1, 2005). Carny Folk: The World's Weirdest Sideshow Acts. Citadel Press. pp. 175–. ISBN 9780806526614. Retrieved June 1, 2012.
  2. ^ a b Smith, Dinitia (June 9, 1995). "Step Right Up! See the Bearded Person!". The New York Times. Retrieved March 19, 2019.
  3. ^ Sussman, Mark. "A Queer Circus Amok in New York." In Cohen-Cruz, Jan. Radical Street Performance: An International Anthology. London: Routledge, 2003. ISBN 9780415152303 Print. p. 262-270.
  4. ^ Bax, Sander, ed. (2015). Interrupting the City: Artistic Constitutions of the Public Sphere. Amsterdam: Valiz. p. 197. ISBN 9789492095022.
  5. ^ Carr, C. (July 14, 1998). "Circus Minimus". The Village Voice. Retrieved March 19, 2019.
  6. ^ Krawitz, Jan (1993). "Review of Juggling Gender". Journal of Film and Video. 45 (2/3): 113–115. ISSN 0742-4671. JSTOR 20688011.
  7. ^ Gold, Tami; Miller, Jennifer; Steinberg, Allison; Porath, Yoram; Kafka, Harry; AndersonGold Films; Tamerik Productions; Transit Media Communications (2008), Juggling gender: politics, sex and identity, AndersonGold Films ; Distributed by AndersonGold Films, Inc/Transit Media Communications, OCLC 311095953
  8. ^ Carter, Marie (September 4, 2007). "Political Circus Dazzles Brooklyn". The Brooklyn Rail. Retrieved March 19, 2019.
  9. ^ "Vaginal Davis". Studio Museum in Harlem. July 6, 2010. Archived from the original on June 8, 2012. Retrieved March 12, 2013.
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