Prepare for the coolest history lesson you’ll ever receive, as solo artist Rick Miller comes to the Capitol with his show Boom!
“The concept is to do a one-man history with 25 years in 100 minutes with 100 voices. Every year takes about four minutes,” Miller told the Star this week.
“What you get out of it is not necessarily the deepest connection with Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, but you get an understanding of what else was happening politically and culturally during that time.”
The show chronicles the years from the Hiroshima bombing (one sort of “boom”) and then follows the baby boomers through to Apollo 11, a similarly explosive event.
During his performance Miller ricochets through characters, jumping from singing The Who’s “My Generation” to jutting out his chin and grumbling through a Richard Nixon impression.
He also plays a familiar Kootenay character: a Vietnam draft dodger.
“I’ve got one character who comes up to Canada, and he’s one the main characters. It’s a Canada-centric story that obviously ties into a lot of the things that were going on in the United States at that time.”
And Miller was surprised by what he learned about that era.
“I started with a personal history, and I was interviewing my dad to document his story. He was pre-Boomer and he grew up in war-torn Vienna. His childhood was so different than what I had known and the typical story you think of in the 1950s, like Leave it to Beaver,” he said.
As he continued to gather his research and work with personal stories, he found himself noticing similarities between generations.
“Every generation thinks they’re special. They think they’re going through things for the first time. There’s always that Time Magazine cover with the headline ‘The Me Generation’, that seems to be recurring. What I realized was history is more a circle than we like to think.”
He said studying culture’s historical patterns is the only way to advance as a society.
“When I look back at 1968, at the chaos and protests, then I compare it to when the 2012 Occupy was in full force, there were so many phrases and maxims that were literally drawn word for word from 1968.”
He said the more humanity keeps this in mind, the better off we’ll be.
“If we’re connecting with our parents and grandparents, getting beyond normal resentments to tap us into what brings us together instead of what divides us, I think we’ll all realize how inter-connected we are. It will serve us better to learn from our mistakes.”
The show is a multi-media extravaganza, with musical numbers an abundance of visual spectacle. This is partly due to Miller’s education as an architect.
“I wanted to make and design things, and I wanted to make an design my own shows. It’s architecture I can perform. I use a lot of the same principles that I teach at the University of Toronto. I call myself a hack of all trades.”
The show will be at 8 p.m. on Wednesday, March 11. Tickets are $30 for adults and $28 for students and are available from capitoltheatre.bc.ca or by phone at 250-352-6363.
For more information visit rickmiller.ca or boomtheshow.com.
