Jennifer Miller
{{Short description|American circus entertainer, writer and professor}}
{{Other people}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=December 2014}}
{{infobox person
| image = Jennifer Miller Bearded Lady by David Shankbone.jpg
| name = Jennifer Miller
| birth_place = United States
| birth_date = {{birth_year and age|1961}}
| occupation= {{hlist|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.{{cite book|last=Hornberger|first=Francine|title=Carny Folk: The World's Weirdest Sideshow Acts|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KodqEhzSzzEC&pg=RA3-PT93|accessdate=June 1, 2012|date=April 1, 2005|publisher=Citadel Press|isbn=9780806526614|pages=175–}} She is a juggler and fire eater. Miller lives in New York City.
Biography
Miller is the youngest daughter of two Quaker professors{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/09/arts/step-right-up-see-the-bearded-person.html|title=Step Right Up! See the Bearded Person!|last=Smith|first=Dinitia|date=9 June 1995|work=The New York Times|access-date=19 March 2019}} 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, 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.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.
In 1989, she established the acclaimed NYC political performance troupe Circus Amok.{{Cite book|title=Interrupting the City: Artistic Constitutions of the Public Sphere|editor-last=Bax|editor-first=Sander|publisher=Valiz|year=2015|isbn=9789492095022|location=Amsterdam|pages=197}}{{Cite news|url=https://www.villagevoice.com/1998/07/14/circus-minimus/|title=Circus Minimus|last=Carr|first=C.|date=14 July 1998|work=The Village Voice|access-date=19 March 2019}} 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.{{Cite journal|last=Krawitz|first=Jan|date=1993|title=Review of Juggling Gender|journal=Journal of Film and Video|volume=45|issue=2/3|pages=113–115|issn=0742-4671|jstor=20688011}}{{Citation|last=Gold|first=Tami|title=Juggling gender: politics, sex and identity|date=2008|publisher=AndersonGold Films ; Distributed by AndersonGold Films, Inc/Transit Media Communications|oclc=311095953|last2=Miller|first2=Jennifer|last3=Steinberg|first3=Allison|last4=Porath|first4=Yoram|last5=Kafka|first5=Harry|last6=AndersonGold Films|last7=Tamerik Productions|last8=Transit Media Communications}} 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.{{Cite news|url=https://brooklynrail.org/2007/9/streets/political-circus-dazzles-brooklyn|title=Political Circus Dazzles Brooklyn|last=Carter|first=Marie|date=4 September 2007|work=The Brooklyn Rail|access-date=19 March 2019}}
In 2010, Miller served as a co-hostess to Vaginal Davis' performance piece "Speaking from the Diaphragm" at Performance Space 122.{{cite web|title=Vaginal Davis|url=http://www.studiomuseum.org/studio-blog/artists/studio-visits/vaginal-davis|work=Studio Museum in Harlem|accessdate=March 12, 2013|date=July 6, 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120608010237/http://www.studiomuseum.org/studio-blog/artists/studio-visits/vaginal-davis|archive-date=June 8, 2012|url-status=dead}}
Image:Jugglers Circus Amok by David Shankbone.jpg
Image:JeniferMiller2.jpg
See also
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
{{commons|Jennifer Miller|Jennifer Miller}}
- {{cite news |title=Step Right Up! See the Bearded Person! |author=Dinitia Smith |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/09/arts/step-right-up-see-the-bearded-person.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm |newspaper=New York Times |date=June 9, 1995 |accessdate=November 2, 2011}}
- {{cite news|title=Interview with Jennifer Miller: The Bearded Lady |author=Michelle Markelz |url=http://www.voxmagazine.com/stories/2011/09/29/interview-jennifer-miller-bearded-lady/ |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130205221916/http://www.voxmagazine.com/stories/2011/09/29/interview-jennifer-miller-bearded-lady/ |url-status=dead |archive-date=February 5, 2013 |newspaper=Vox Magazine – Columbia Missourian |date=September 29, 2011 |accessdate=November 2, 2011 }}
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20070927211233/http://lastvisibledog.org/blog/2006/03/04/jennifer-miler-and-circus-amok/ Founder of political theater/circus to perform at MCLA]
- [http://media.www.mclabeacon.com/media/storage/paper802/news/2007/03/29/News/Bearded.Woman.Comes.To.Campus-2810452.shtml The Independent Student Publication of Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts]{{dead link|date=November 2017 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}, 2007
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Miller, Jennifer}}
Category:Place of birth missing (living people)
Category:20th-century American people
Category:20th-century American women
Category:21st-century American people
Category:21st-century American women
Category:American performance artists