Jennifer Miller (born 1961) is an American

circus A circus is a company of performers who put on diverse entertainment shows that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, dancers, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, magicians, ventriloquists, and unicy ...

entertainer, writer, and professor at

Pratt Institute Pratt Institute is a private university with its main campus in Brooklyn, New York. It has an additional campus in Manhattan and an extension campus in Utica, New York at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute. The institute was founded in 18 ...

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

. She has lived with a beard for most of her life. She is a

juggler Juggling is a physical skill, performed by a juggler, involving the manipulation of objects for recreation, entertainment, art or sport. The most recognizable form of juggling is toss juggling. Juggling can be the manipulation of one object o ...

and

fire eater Fire eating is the act of putting a flaming object into the mouth and extinguishing it. A fire eater can be an entertainer, a street performer, part of a sideshow or a circus act but has also been part of spiritual tradition in India. Physi ...

. Miller lives in New York City.

Biography

Miller is the youngest daughter of two Quaker professors and grew up in

Connecticut Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...

and

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

. 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, 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 Sarah Miriam Schulman (born July 28, 1958) is an American novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, gay activist, and AIDS historian. She holds an endowed chair in nonfiction at Northwestern University and is a fellow of the New York ...

. In 1989, she established the acclaimed NYC political performance troupe Circus Amok. She was also a focus of

Tami Gold Tami Kashia Gold is a documentary filmmaker, visual artist and educator. She is also a professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York in the Department of Film and Media Studies. Biography As a teenager, Gold studied in Mexico ...

'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. 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 The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards given since 1956 by ''The Village Voice'' newspaper to theater artists and groups involved in off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions in New York City. Starting just after th ...

, Bessie, BAX 10, and, most recently, the

Ethyl Eichelberger Ethyl Eichelberger (July 17, 1945 – August 12, 1990) was an Obie Award-winning American drag performer, playwright, and actor. He became an influential figure in experimental theater and writing, and wrote nearly forty plays portraying women s ...

Award. She currently teaches in New York at

, and has taught at several universities including

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

Cal Arts The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) is a private art school in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both the ...

Scripps College Scripps College is a private liberal arts women's college in Claremont, California. It was founded as a member of the Claremont Colleges in 1926, a year after the consortium's formation. Journalist and philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps pr ...

Trinity/La MaMa Performing Arts Program The Trinity/La MaMa Performing Arts Program is a fall semester study away program of Trinity College based at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City. The program is part of the Trinity College Office of Study Away, with students f ...

and

NYU New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a non-denominational all-male institutio ...

. In 2010, Miller served as a co-hostess to

Vaginal Davis Vaginal Davis (born in Los Angeles, California) is an American performer, painter, independent curator, composer, film-maker and writer. Born intersex and raised in South Central, Los Angeles, Davis gained notoriety in New York during the 1980s ...

' performance piece "Speaking from the Diaphragm" at

Performance Space 122 Performance Space New York, formerly known as Performance Space 122 or P.S. 122, is a non-profit arts organization founded in 1980 in the East Village of Manhattan in an abandoned public school building. Origin The former elementary school, Pub ...

. Image:Jugglers Circus Amok by David Shankbone.jpg Image:JeniferMiller2.jpg

References

External links

* *
Founder of political theater/circus to perform at MCLA

The Independent Student Publication of Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
2007 {{DEFAULTSORT:Miller, Jennifer 1961 births Living people Place of birth missing (living people) 20th-century American people 20th-century American women 21st-century American people 21st-century American women American Quakers American performance artists Bearded women People from New York City Quaker feminists

Biography

See also

References

External links