#87 – Justin Miller presents Pearle Harbour’s Chautauqua

Transcript

Transcript auto generated. 

Phil Rickaby
Welcome to Episode 87 of Stageworthy. I’m your host Phil Rickaby. Stageworthy features conversations in Canadian theatre with artists of all stripes from actor to director to play right and more. My guest this week is Justin Miller, who will be performing as his alter ego Pearl Harbour in Pearl Harbour Chautauqua, at the 2017 edition of the summerworks festival. If you’re listening to this for the first time, and you like what you hear, I would love it if you’d subscribe to the podcast. You can find Stageworthy on Apple podcasts, Google music or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to drop me a line, I would love to hear from you. You can find Stageworthy on Facebook and Twitter at stageworthypod. And you can find the website at Stageworthy podcast.com.

Is that tend to cover the audience as well or just Yeah.

Justin Miller
You are in the tents? Yep. Yeah, pretty, pretty terrain. Oh, wow.

Phil Rickaby
So this is Pearl Harbour doing like an old fashioned tent? Revival.

Justin Miller
tent revival. Yeah, that’s right. It’s a it’s an old time tent revival for our post truth world.

Phil Rickaby
And is this sort of like a revival in the way that what’s your name in Anything Goes is a minister? And there’s like revival services, but they’re like completely, like, sexy and like and scandalous. Or is it like what kind of Revival Show?

Justin Miller
I can say without a doubt it’s the sexiest Revival Show you’ve ever seen. Okay.

It’s a Yeah, it’s part revival. It’s part cabaret. It’s part tragicomedy you are in and a part of it, you’re being called upon there are roles and tasks and sing alongs. And the audience every single night affects the outcome of the revival, and they affect how we come together as a people because every audience needs something

Phil Rickaby
different. Okay. Yeah. Wow. Before we go too much deeper into the revival. I’m a little curious about the genesis of Pearl Harbour. Why you chose drag performance medium. So can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely.

Justin Miller
So I had been studying clown for a little bit, and was particularly particularly interested in Buffon, which is a dark kind of clowning, that kind of uses nasty satire to attack. The things we hold most dear about ourselves. The worst hypocrisy is that we can’t even confront. And I had just come off production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, okay, directed by my longtime collaborator, Rebecca Bellerin. And Rebecca and Rebecca is, is the number one ally with pearl. She’s, she’s been here from the beginning. And when I did drag, I noticed a couple things for Hedvig. One, I was surprised at how quickly off the cuff riffin came to me interactions in character. And I was also amazed what people do for a drag queen what an audience does, they open up their chest, they let you get in their space physically, they get you the they let you get in their space mentally. And just really allow you to kind of traverse all these dark, rocky edgy topics. And they love it and they want more. I’ve thought about this for a while because I didn’t get why exactly it is why is it the makeup and the wig? What is it about this man playing an obviously outsized, exaggerated cartoon version of a wartime gal? And thinking and thinking and thinking? I think it’s because it’s a very instinctual, almost elemental relationship, that audiences have to drag queens. I think drag queens are like the capital F fool of our time. Okay. So in the way that the jester of the court could mock the King to his face could say what everybody is thinking and managed to get away with it. That kind of mythical, almost shamanistic little space that they occupy that lets them wander down twisty past that we don’t dare to. People immediately understand that relationship with a drag queen. And they let you get in and they let you go deep and they let you pull them along.

Phil Rickaby
Any idea why that is like what is it that makes people commit to the drag queen in a way that they don’t for a clown or for another another type of character?

Justin Miller
I think they would for for clowns, too, for good clowns, and good queens. It’s all kind of the same messy, incestuous family. But there is something about delight in taboo and egging them on egging the queen on, and giving the Queen permission, giving them authority. And as a queen, taking that a thought, right, right. Yeah.

Phil Rickaby
Um, you mentioned you mentioned doing doing Hedvig before you created the character of Pearl Harbour, and was it like, What drew you to headbutt? Was it just the role come along? did? Did you ever question why you might want to perform that role or did it just like seemed like a natural fit,

Justin Miller
the role sort of came along, I knew about the play, I loved the movie. But I didn’t really ever imagine myself doing it. So I kind of took a flyer on it, I kind of took a lark and it ended up being perhaps the most important role I’ve ever played. There are some characters I find that you just slip into, and there is such a thin barrier between the character and yourself. I just understood Hedvig right away, I understood her struggle, I understood her, her loneliness, her desire, the, the attempts at Beauty and the successful beauty that she that she manages to achieve when she accepts herself. It was a kind of revelatory, transformative role for me to undertake. And I’m sure that my own attitudes for drag really were formed in that time. And like I was, I’m so grateful to have a gift like John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedvig as my introduction into this pool of drag. Yeah, it was a it was a beautiful experience. Really? Was

Phil Rickaby
Was that was that your your model for drag? Was that like, did you know much about drag before you performed Hedvig? Or did you

Justin Miller
so my fiancee then boyfriend? Now fiance was trying to get me into drag race at the time. Okay. And I was very patient and ask

Phil Rickaby
what like, what was it that that drew that made your fiance think that you should go on drag race? Like, have you been performing driver? I just thought it would be fun.

Justin Miller
No, he was trying to get me to watch the show itself. Okay. Okay.

Phil Rickaby
Yeah. Not like to be on as a contestant. No, like, Okay,

Justin Miller
if I went on drag race, I think I would crash and burn spectacular. I’m worrying too much in my head. I’d be wondering all the time how I’d be editing. Like, I would either get the kind of edit where they put a sad trombone like or villain edit.

Phil Rickaby
Okay, totally. Okay. Totally. Okay.

Justin Miller
But I had never really had any exposure to drag before that point. I remember my parents watching Priscilla Queen of the Desert when I was a kid, but I was not pulled into it. I remember seeing Dame Edna on Just For Laughs and things like that. Yeah. But it really wasn’t until until Hedvig until I came at it from a sort of backwards angle that I realised what an incredible tool it is, for being truly present and with an audience, right,

Phil Rickaby
yeah. And so did you get that from drag race? Did you get that from? You got that from from, from heaven from from Hedvig?

Justin Miller
Yeah. When I looked, or when I started developing Perl, when she started rolling around, in my mind, it was a lot of Hedvig in my head, because that form of drag, it’s sort of it does something a little bit more, I think, when you are able to speak to really universal human experiences of loss and loneliness and suffering, and hope and love and the strength just to endure, right. That’s where the Buffon influence really came in and it met the aesthetic prison. dictation of drag and Hedvig I was thinking a lot about Dame Edna, at the time I was thinking about a character that I could plop down in different scenarios who would always be a constant, right? She wouldn’t go away after one show. But she could conquer and challenge and speak out about a number of different things. And that’s kind of how she’s been going on since and it’ll be three years. Her birthday is actually just coming up in a couple of weeks. Oh, yeah.

Phil Rickaby
So you’ll be performing this show. Yeah. For her birth on her

Justin Miller
birthday. Yeah, that’s cool. Which, incidentally, was August 6, the day that drum bopped the drum pop. Man for an event of this gravity I probably shouldn’t have misspoke there. The day the bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6 ended up being her birthday. The first time she got in front of an audience okay. Yeah.

Phil Rickaby
Know Were you always a performer. Did you have a you mentioned studying Buffon? How did you come up? How did you how did you come up before from a theatre from a clown? How did you when did you start wanting to perform? So

Justin Miller
I was a really goofy kind of kid. From that little alarm hopefully not something alarming. I was a really goofy kind of little kid and love to do voices. I grew up with The Simpsons. So that informs most of my personality. I studied theatre in university at university Toronto and it was there that I first was exposed to clown and Buffon. What happened was I saw a presentation by this brilliant Canadian playwright named Karen Heinz. She did a Buffon solo series with her character poxy, right. It was sort of like Greek tragedy done by Betty Boop, she’s acidic and hilarious and marks our consumption while being so victim to it. And when I saw her perform, it was another like, earth shattering, changing moment where I was like, uh, what is that? I have to do that. This is what my purpose should be. So that kind of blew out all the dreams about Stratford which up until that point, were like, Well, isn’t that the most noble thing a Canadian actor can do?

It’s not it’s really not

unless they invite people there, in which case it absolutely is. So, from that point, I really got deep into the the clown world I studied with John Turner, who is part of Mump and smooth this amazing Canadian horror clown duo up at the Manitou and conservatory for creation and performance. It was called the clown farm. When I went there, I

decided to go with a more a more dignified name. Well, they got charitable status, so I can be charitable status.

I think you need a web a web URL that somehow a little more legitimate. You have to have, but it’s it’s the clown farm, I think to me for the end of time, and probably for most of us,

Phil Rickaby
probably people who are still going to probably call it the county Farm. Oh,

Justin Miller
absolutely. Absolutely. And he just waters us and grows a little demented clown minds out there. So I’m, I’m super fortunate because I had amazing influences and amazing instructors like John Turner, and I later ended up studying and becoming fast friends with Karen Heinz, and everything kind of came together in this in this way that if you were making a made for TV movie about it, you’d be like, Wow, that’s amazing. Everything’s just turning up the exact right way for this kid.

Phil Rickaby
did was it difficult for you to come to terms with making the transition? I mean, if you spend, if you grew up and you’re thinking about a career in Canadian theatre, Stratford is the thing that you imagine that you will because it’s study work.

Justin Miller
I was a high schooler from Guelph It was basically the only exposure Yeah, yeah, it was fucking nothing else.

Phil Rickaby
So when it when you decided when you had to decide and come to terms with the fact that that was not the path you were likely to take? And a clown was something else. Was it difficult for you to to to leave Stratford behind in your mind? Or did it you just sort of like, close the door on it and

Justin Miller
Oh, not at all? Not at all. Like, let’s be honest, it’s not like they’re they’re knocking on my door right now to begin with. So it’s not like I’ve made a noble difficult choice here, of course, but here’s the thing it was. That was my idea of what an actor is. And I really wanted to be the thing more than I wanted to do the thing I wanted to be an actor more than I wanted to act. I think the type of performance that clown gets you into that is so immediately viscerally present with an audience like my eyes into yours, we hear a sound cell phone goes off. We both heard it. So you have to incorporate it into the story. Anything that risks taking the story away from the storyteller has to become a part of the story, right? So that kind of on the edge vulnerability that’s demanded. There’s nothing else like it in my head. And it’s what I love doing most of all,

Phil Rickaby
did you ever get a chance to see one pin smooth? I have? Yeah.

Justin Miller
I saw them at magnetic north when they were in Kitchener Waterloo. Yeah, I know. They don’t perform too much out east. Any artistic dress directors listening should book them and anybody who happens to catch them at West Go, go go because they are fucking gods. They are clown Gods when they were

Phil Rickaby
performing in in Toronto. And you know, they were like a perennials at the Fringe Festivals around here. For ages, I never got the chance to see them. I only heard about them.

Justin Miller
Shame on you. No shame upon you.

Phil Rickaby
I always figured that I would always have the chance. Right? Okay, so I don’t see him this year. Don’t worry, you’ll be able to see them. And then all of a sudden, they stopped performing as frequently. Were when you first saw them? What did you like? What was it about what they did that you wanted to incorporate into your own work?

Justin Miller
I think it was the sense of surprise. You don’t know what’s coming, but everything is possible. They can go in any direction. And John described this really beautifully. The state of clown neutral for neutral for a clown. It’s like a ball on the top of a hill. And the slightest breeze can send that ball rolling in any direction, you have 360 degrees of possibility around you at all times. That’s where you start from, let alone when you get angry or when you get full joy or rage or jealousy. And that level of possibility and vulnerability the way you care so deeply about them. And Mump and smooth speak gibberish they don’t even use English. They don’t need it. To pull you by the heart down in these dark rabbit holes. Yeah.

Phil Rickaby
So when you started to develop Pearl Harbour What was your first thought about about this character? Did you know that she was going to be costume costume? Okay, at first okay.

Justin Miller
It was an outside in sort of approach, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah. Pearl Harbour came to mind. Somebody said what what would be your drag name that said Pearl Harbour because there’s a grand tradition of, you know, pawns being dragged names. You’ve got Sharon Needles, head of lettuce, you know, all those classic campy names. And as soon as I said Pearl Harbour, I just had the image right away. And that was what I call classic Pearl, her stewardess outfit. And she’s kind of like, sexed up Andrews Sisters by way of a Bouvier Bo little Edie kind of.

Everything’s all very vague here. It’s perhaps a little huskier then she would like that she much like my grandmother surely just keeps trying to muscle, her intonation just a little higher in the throat, you know?

Phil Rickaby
Z refer to classic Perl. What other iterations are there of Perl?

Justin Miller
Oh, basically, when I write a new show, I get an excuse to buy a new costume. Okay, that’s perfect. That’s perfect. So that’s, that’s sort of how I play it. I’ve got a couple of looks upstairs. I think one one for every day of the week at this point. And for the Revival Show, I’ve got this first time pearls and pants, okay, which means I can squat down low and leap cross benches and it’s great. I don’t have to worry about exposing myself in the same way. Yeah.

Phil Rickaby
So the Revival Show, in terms of like, putting this thing together. How did you decide that you wanted to take this this drag queen character into an old fashion revival,

Justin Miller
right. I had just done a show called Pearl Harbour Sunday school. And it was kind of kind of a parody on how we relate to each other on the internet. had the kind of judgments coming down from on high. The regressive progressive kind of infighting and punching down. It was all fine enough. But what happened was I, I was struck by another source of inspiration instruct really hard. Like when I saw Karen Heinz, like when I saw John Turner in month and Smoot, I went to New York and saw a performance artist called Taylor Mack, do a 24 hour concert. And he’s a drag queen as well. But when I say drag, I don’t mean like female realness. I mean, the most outlandish, spectacular, gaudy, garish over the top, impossibly absurd, surrealist art piece costumes that are done with Dollar Store materials and are actively decaying as you’re watching him. And Taylor Mac’s relationship with his audience is so completely raw and with anybody else you would watch, and you would go, Oh, my God, like what a vulnerable performance. But underneath that openness is such strength. As a performer. It’s not vulnerability, but it is complete exposure. And I was just in awe of how he got an audience to do everything. He needed everything he wanted, and more all the time. And I was always very careful up until that point, up until ceiling seeing Taylor. Oh, and I should say as well. I’m not. It’s very hard for me to work it into conversation. But Taylor Mac’s proper pronoun is actually Judy. Okay, so I know I just sent him along. But Judy is kind of beyond gender. And Taylor says that he chose the pronoun Judy because nobody can roll their eyes at it without looking camp themself. You can’t go Judy, without looking like a Judy yourself. So this gives you a sense of Judy’s mind. Judy can tell you, you come here, start doing this. You come here start doing then. People are there right away. My experience up until that point had been asking a lot of permission from an audience being very delicate. Making sure I provide them with an out just in case they don’t feel up to it. Right. And there was something about his openness, his willingness, Judy’s willingness to fail Judy’s openness, Judy’s strength that had the audience trust, Judy, moment one to the very end after 24 hours. And I knew that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to create an experience that put you on the same level as Pearl, that everything was in the moment literal, the actual time is passing. There’s no There’s as little theatrical pretence as I can muster. So the lights, the experience, it’s all very analogue it’s controlled within the tent. There’s not really a lot of sound effects other than the great accompaniment by my friend Steven Conway who plays Live Music brother gantry we call them it’s a it’s a very literal experience. It is literally a revival. You are literally a revival audience right. And you are literally being brought through this journey by this deranged, six foot five drag queen who’s very enthusiastic and probably just wants the best for you probably. Yeah,

Phil Rickaby
I have to save it. Now that you’ve described the staging to me and we’ve seen the tent come down and your time lapse. The if somebody had said Okay, so we’re going to do this show at this festival. And we’re going to put up a tent in the theatre. I would probably tell them you can’t do that. Yeah, I had a fringy festival. You can’t do that in the summer.

Justin Miller
Thank you summerworks Thank you, Laura, nanny for trusting us that we’d be able to do it and thank you to Giuseppe Candela to Mirabella Cinder sing to Rebecca Balor into mica champagne. That’s his actual name, but I keep telling him it would be a great drag named they tear the tent down in record time. And it is a big ass tent. It’s probably about 150 pounds of Canvas 20 by 25 feet pine benches and all

Phil Rickaby
it did you did you have to convince yourself that was possible or did you just say yes, we’ll do it.

Justin Miller
Oh, I just said yes, we’ll do it.

Oh, absolutely.

Phil Rickaby
I probably would. I probably personally probably would have thought about it for like I A couple of weeks

Justin Miller
well, that’s where we differ as

I was, I was quite worried about it this past month. We also had a run. The show was developed with why not theatres, the riser project at the theatre centres. So we had an eight show run in April where we were working out testing the concept seeing if people will come along and Glory hallelujah they do. And boy, do they ever Nice. So we had familiarity with the tent and the process of getting it up and getting it down. For summer works. It was a matter about doing it at record speed. Yeah. Which I can confidently say like I challenge anybody to beat this record. It is down in 15 minutes flat.

Phil Rickaby
I don’t know. That’s, I mean, that’s, I’ve seen the good Fringe Festivals and things like that. I’ve seen some elaborate stuff, but never like a tent like that. I’ve seen silks and people hanging from whatever, but I think they just string those back up when they’re done. Yeah, to put them back up again. Yeah, every night. So that’s, I mean, that’s pretty incredible just to do that, and with with benches to go with it. And

Justin Miller
it’s, it sounds like so much work. And it is a lot of work that I personally don’t have to do. But it is so worth it. Because when you’re in the tent and the flaps are closed, it’s such a transporting experience. It’s really amazing how was in a couple of minutes of this revival of our Chautauqua. How you’re completely elsewhere, like the theatre really does disappear around you. It’s just the soft incandescent lighting into the people on the benches next to you. There’s a little bit of warmth and energy buzzing in the space. Yeah, you can’t you can’t get that experience. If you don’t go through the work. You don’t have the actual tent.

Phil Rickaby
Yeah. So now you’ve invited Pearl Harbour for seven with us for the eighth performance will this be You said one for each of each day of the week is it

Justin Miller
i there so Chautauqua Pearl Harbour Chautauqua is the sixth full length play. And then there have been a endless amount of little cabaret performances concert series. She was leading an opera an immersive version of the fleet of mouse with this amazing young opera company in the city called opera five, they wrote out a character and let me write myself in. So yeah, Johann Strauss as he truly intended, of course, his his work to be enjoyed. Yeah. So this is this is three years in this is six plays in this is the first show that I really haven’t dropped like a hot potato, okay? Because the other ones have been all very of the moment. They were about the mayoral election when it was Chow and Ford, right. They were about there was a Christmas show. You know, there were things that were tied very immediately to what was going on. And Chautauqua is a little more timeless. Right, Chautauqua is very urgent. It’s about the world that we find ourselves in that’s falling apart. It’s about these very ideologically divided communities. You have your truth, I have my truth. And it kind of asks, Where can we come back and meet at the truth? You know, how can people connect again, beyond ideology beyond just being with the folks that you already agree with beyond preaching to the choir? I know that’s basically what I’m doing because theatre going audiences tend to be of a certain theatre going audience type.

Phil Rickaby
Although I will say that if you’re able to get people to participate, that is a rare thing in theatre, because audience participation is the kind of thing that if you say there’s audience participation before the show, a lot of people are like, aren’t going to that?

Justin Miller
Oh, yeah, absolutely. And Chautauqua is a goddamn miracle because the audience participation is actually fun. So it’s not it’s not just the regular kind. People get so into the experience, and I think it is this experience of being in the tent of being a little lost to the world around you of having to kind of connect and look at the people next to you. And believe me, like, Pearl Harbour will not tolerate hesitation. Like you’re better to say yes, if she locks eyes on you, but she will always take care of you. You will never be unsafe, which is not the same as uncomfortable. No,

Phil Rickaby
that’s true. Yeah. Now as somebody who has embodied a character for three years Um, do you ever find that that Pearl Harbour invades your life in ways that you didn’t expect?

Justin Miller
Yeah, absolutely. Certainly it has invaded my bank account. Like, I’ve always been a vintage queen, but buying women’s clothes is a recent thing for me. Occasionally, I’ll, I’ll pull a face. And I’ll get clocked on like, that’s a pearl or pearl will be asked to leave the room. Sometimes, with how I’m responding or dealing with things, you know, she’s, she’s the best and the very worst of names. So she tends to come out in moments of passion.

Phil Rickaby
Right, right. Is that I mean, that that can be I’m sure trying and you’re in a relationship and possibly among friends. Do you have a look, aside from asking her to leave the room? Do they? Have they learned just to deal with it? Or do they just

Justin Miller
I try to keep a pretty big distinction, I’d say. But every everybody loves pearl. I feel like Pearl really, for all her abrasiveness is probably more tolerable than Justin has gotten on the self doubt problems and the blahs a millennial like sads and all of them. But Pearl Pro can do anything. And I have an amazing fiance who’s so supportive, who helps put my lashes on because after three years, I’m still really bad at that. Who’s Who’s tolerated the fact that our office in school in scare quotes has become pearls storage rooms slash dressing room. Slash wig hidey hole. So I just have the best people in my life and and they love what Pearl brings into the world and they love that experience. Yeah.

Phil Rickaby
As somebody is somebody who is portraying somebody who has more confidence than you do, yeah. How does that how does that feel? Do you ever like? Do you ever rely on pearls to get you through something in a way that you maybe wouldn’t have if you didn’t have her? Hmm.

Justin Miller
It’s a great question. I’m sure that she does muscle through and and push me through some some tougher things, some bigger confrontations. She also lets me indulge in. As John Turner said, She is just a mask, right? The makeup is a mask. The clown nose is a mask. Masks are intensely useful things. They’re not bad things. They let us survive. Yeah. Because otherwise you’d bump into a friend on the street and they’d say, how are you when you go? I’m not doing

so well, right? Of course. Yeah.

Different masks that you do different things. And Pearl lets me overcome, and lets me challenge and lets me confront the biggest problems that I have with myself. Ultimately, when I’m tacking like an audience for being hypocritical about progressive views, but being closed and not welcoming, if I’m attacking can like overconsumption or a greediness or, you know, naked ambition, selfishness, I have all of those things and spade, Pearl has all of those things even more so. Right? We can only I think, really attack what we are able to understand and see in ourselves. I’d like to be done with it. I’d like to be rid of those nasty things. But that’s, again, the 360 experience of being human. That’s what Buffon is all about. And drag is all about. It’s about embracing the fact that we have amazing capacity for the tender. And the terrible. Yeah. And at certain points you got to choose.

Phil Rickaby
Now when you were doing workshopping this, you had audiences in to find out if they would go with it. How far did they go? Were they hallelujah, sing and praise the Lord. Amen. Oh, you betcha.

Justin Miller
You betcha they were let me hear you say You betcha. I’m talking literally. Wait, actually, I didn’t say this.

Let me hear you say You betcha. Phil, you better have Phillip. Come on. Let’s try it a little more. You betcha. You see, there we go.

Phil Rickaby
So so it’s almost immediate, that people that people jump in?

Justin Miller
Yeah, it is. And that’s because immediately the show is with the audience and acknowledging those distinct individual people that are there every night. There’s not the pretence of talking at the audience. When she asked a question, it’s never it’s never a hypothetical, it’s always a literal question. And there’s always a response back. The director of this piece Byron LaViolette, amazing director who engineers experience for audiences, you probably know him best as the director of Valdemoro. And Jasper shows Yes, yeah, who are another brilliant set of Canadian clowns. Byron was great, because he would always have test audiences come in to work the material to see how it was landing, where we needed a little more massaging where you need a little more sugar where you need a little more sauciness where you need a little more steel.

Phil Rickaby
Hmm. You were saying that? I mean, it goes where the like the audience builds the show. So you obviously have to be really flexible. But you have a starting point. Yeah, absolutely. Have a script

Justin Miller
so you can drop it. Within the action of the Chautauqua. And Chautauqua was this old type of revival touring show, it was really popular and turn of the century in America, and they would have lectures, they would have musical numbers, they would have Chautauqua dramas and morality plays and things. So there are like contained little units that make up the show. And then within those Uden you those units, you can let audience off the chain a little bit, you can let them wander and see where they’re where they’re going to take it.

Phil Rickaby
So you know, when an audience deviates, where you can take them

Justin Miller
Oh, yeah, I can, I can pretty confidently bring it back to where I need it to be, like, ultimately, Pearl harbours name is in the show. And she won’t be afraid to remind you of that, if you get a little, a little vision of your startup while in the tent.

Phil Rickaby
And does it always end in the same way? Or does it end in a completely different way every time

Justin Miller
it ends? Hmm. The form is always the same how it ends. But the feeling of the ending is going to be different, because of the experience that you’ve just had both you as a collective and you as an individual. And you share this, this final little beautiful moment with pearl just before you leave. And that is a moment of complete vulnerability of complete openness of looking at each other and knowing we’ve gone through this thing, and it’s never going to be like this again, because you’re not going to be here. And they’re not going to be here. And everybody else has brought their own presents their own issues, their own joys and fears in the tent.

Phil Rickaby
Hmm. Now, when you’ve performed pearl in the past, have you always performed in this way? Or has it been more scripted?

Justin Miller
It’s been more scripted. And stiffer, seeing Taylor Mack and how open he was. That was the kind of impetus to try to create a show that that struck the same chord in audiences that it did while I was watching, Judy. So the more that I have leaned into that impulse, the better the show has become, the more that I have paid every single second attention to an audience, the more fun it’s been for everybody. And I think that after three years and workshopping her through a number of different shows and events, this feels like I’ve kind of figured out what she’s meant for okay. It feels it feels complete, in a way. It feels like she’s found her purpose.

Phil Rickaby
That was Justin, who’s who’s been performing Pearl Harbour Mote you often with more scripted production. How does it feel to be less scripted and to be faced with a different way of performing Pearl?

Justin Miller
Terrifying sometimes,

I do have my tightly scripted lyrical moments. But it is free. You know, I’m not somebody who necessarily rolls with failure easily. But Pearl can somersault and splat on her face. And she’ll still get 10 out of 10. And she’ll still get adored by the audience because you just pick yourself up and wipe your bloody nose and then maybe wipe it on somebody’s sleeve or something. acknowledge what actually happened that you failed so much. And that’s more exciting for people like people. People know when things aren’t going to plan people know when it’s real. It’s in this moment, it’s been Because of that thing that that person said, it’s generally more fun to see things go awry than it is to see them go to plan.

Phil Rickaby
Yeah. It’s interesting because I performed a show last year, my first solo show, and my director at one point was like, okay, so you realise that, like, when you’re doing this, you have, like, you’re not talking about the audience, you have to talk to audience members. You have to talk to them when you’re doing this. And I hadn’t considered that. And it was really there are personal things in the piece. It wasn’t a personal like, it was very personal and, and the idea of talking to people had terrified me at first. The first performance I had,

Justin Miller
well, people are monsters. You never know. You never know with people.

Phil Rickaby
Yeah. Yeah. It

Justin Miller
is scary, isn’t it? Sometimes?

I remember because they’ll know when you’re lying to them. That’s right. They’ll know.

Phil Rickaby
Yeah. Yeah. And that that is terrible. That’s that was like, that was a terrifying fate. Also, like I had never performed it before. So I didn’t know how they were going to react to it. I didn’t want to see like, revulsion disgust, disappointment on their faces. But fortunately, I didn’t. But the idea of connecting with an audience is very freeing. And I found

Justin Miller
What’s the thing that surprised you most you found

Phil Rickaby
how easy it was, how easy it was and how much you could draw them in by doing so the first performance was not that awesome, because I couldn’t look at them. I was just trying to remember everything. So I cheated. And I looked around everybody, right? But the second performance are making eye contact with everybody. It changed everything. And it was easier to go with the flow and this person is laughing but the Keep laughing so now we react to that. Or these guys somehow came in late to a fringe show so I gave them shit. And like it was so much easier just to roll with things once you once like connected with

Justin Miller
them. Yeah, absolutely. And they’ll give you power and they’ll fuel you that way. Yeah, my my favourite thing. My very, very favourite thing is when at the same time somebody in the audience laughs and somebody gasps that’s the kind of humour that really excites me. That’s the kind of thing that pearl is able to do because as a drag queen, she can she can touch on taboo. She can go real, real dark, right? Those are my favourite moments.

Phil Rickaby
Yeah. Is there anything that you want people to know about? The Chautauqua show about this show what they should know coming in or why they should come and see the show. I mean, I’m sold. So like me. I’m like,

Justin Miller
you like just so sweet to me. For me. This bill is sold. Why aren’t you? Why aren’t you buying a ticket right now? www.summerworks.ca/artists/pearl Pearl, hyphen, harbours hyphen, Chautauqua?

Phil Rickaby
We’ll link to it.

Um, but is there something that you

that you think people should know? Or you want them to know about the show?

Justin Miller
Yeah, I think come down and just be ready to surprise yourself. Every single time I have performed this piece, I’ve not been let down. It’s been an amazing, beautiful experience. Seeing how complete strangers separated from the people they came in with, can come together can rally around each other. The sympathy, they’ll feel how they’ll cheer each other on. And how they’ll fall apart sometimes, too. I’ve always been so moved and so appreciative of how people give themselves over to, to purl. It’s such a gift. It’s such a gift for an audience to give that much of themselves to you. And I goddamn try to earn it every single time and I promise that. Yeah, this is this is the kind of work that I think needs to be done right now. Because it’s doing what a lot of theatre says it’ll do. It isn’t connecting people, right? It’s very active. You know, you can’t sit back in the tent and you probably won’t want you want to. At least I hope you won’t want to.

Phil Rickaby
Yeah, awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. It’s been a lot of fun.

Justin Miller
Thank you so much.