INTERVIEW: One man. 25 years of history. Welcome to ‘BOOM’
Photo: Rick Miller wrote and directed BOOM, a tribute to the Baby Boom generation in which he also stars. Photo courtesy of Paul Lampert / Provided by Karen Greco PR with permission.
Rick Miller, the celebrated solo artist, has focused his attention on the highly influential Baby Boom generation for his latest show, simply and effectively titled BOOM. Over the course of the evening he travels 25 years and embodies many, many characters to show the ins and outs of a generation that shaped his parents’ coming of age.
BOOM, which Miller also wrote and directed, plays through Feb. 23 at 59E59 Theaters in Midtown Manhattan. The production comes to the Big Apple courtesy of Kidoons and WYRD Productions, according to press notes.
“It is a lot of fun,” Miller said in a recent phone interview. “I’ve been doing it a lot in Canada and around the world, and this really is the big U.S. premiere. I’ve done it 320 times, so it’s nice to finally be bringing it to New York.”
A few years back, Miller was trying to figure out the subject matter for a new solo show. He had already built an impressive career with several shows under his belt, including MacHomer, a mashup of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth and TV’s The Simpsons, and now he was determined to turn course and find something different.
“I’ve performed solo shows my whole career,” he said. “I’ve done a lot of voices and a lot of music, and I had this interest in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, specifically how rock became really explosive in the ’50s. And that started feeding into these stories that my dad was feeding me from his childhood in Vienna after the war when the Nazis were defeated and Austria was occupied.”
These stories of the post-war years influenced Miller’s creative side, and he started seeing a show about how global history and music history combined to form the Baby Boomer generation — a generation that has changed the world and its cultural contributions, political views and varying lifestyles. BOOM started to take shape.
“It became this personal documentary about my parents and their different journeys through the Baby Boom generation, but combined with all the politics, all the culture, all the music and all the amazing events that made that generation so memorable,” Miller said. “So it all kind of coalesced, and it took about three years to put together from the initial idea to what is pretty simple staging. It’s a pretty cool show that resonates not just with Baby Boomers, but luckily with people of all generations.”
Over the years, BOOM has been edited several times. He has the luxury of being both writer and director, so he is able to make cuts and additions as he sees fit. That said, most of the modifications were mere tweaks, with a couple characters failing to make the final cut.
“I can tweak things as we go along, and there will be a few bits that I’ll be tweaking here for New York,” he said. “Overall some of the most enjoyable performances are definitely the singing imitations. I do about 28 different songs, little bits of songs throughout the show. I think my favorite has always been Barry McGuire singing ‘Eve of Destruction.’ … It’s a 1965 protest song, really gutsy folk tune that still resonates today, so I love doing that song. But, yeah, we’ve had some things come and go. I had a Leonard Cohen song that we got the rights, and then we got them revoked. So that happens. I had to pull that, find something else. I used to do an Eva Perón imitation. That’s not in there, but for the most part, other than adapting it here and there for whatever country I’m in, the core of the show has remained the same.”
Changing from one character to another takes a lot of determination and practice, but Miller has perfected the technique. He likens the imitations to performing a circus act or an athletic feat — do it over and over again, and it becomes second nature.
“It takes a helluva a lot of practice and a lifetime of skill to be able to switch voices from Janis Joplin to whatever else comes next,” he said. “It does take a lot of my focus, and it’s hard on my body and my brain and my voice. But it is a pure joy to be able to connect live with people in a room. I never take that privilege for granted, so I work very hard for it to appear effortless. There’s a lot of fun in the show. There are some serious parts, for sure, and it’s quite touching in places. But overall it is a very entertaining show with a big heart and a big sense of humor and a helluva lot of voices, and I try to make it look like it’s nothing, like it’s easy.”
He added: “This is the story of my parents’ coming of age, and I’m born at the end of it. When the moon landing happened, I was conceived on the exact same day, a little baby boom. I was born in 1970, so beyond hearing and seeing little bits of clips, I didn’t know any of this, other than what you hear about in documentaries and the songs you hear. So I had to do a helluva lot of research to try to get it right. … It’s a personal story, looking at it from a lot of different perspectives, so I have no problem if some of the characters in my documentary kind of contradict each other with their stories because it’s not aiming to be the one true perspective. I don’t think that exists. So, yes, I did a lot of research, but it’s incredibly fun research that you can just go into a rabbit hole on any topic.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
BOOM, written, directed and starring Rick Miller, plays through Feb. 23 at 59E59 Theaters in Midtown Manhattan. Click here for more information and tickets.
