Jennifer Miller

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For other persons named Jennifer Miller, see Jennifer Miller (disambiguation).

Jennifer Miller

Jennifer Miller (born 1961) is an American circus entertainer, writer, and professor at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY and in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures. She is a bearded woman, juggler, and fire eater. Miller lives in New York City.

Miller is the youngest daughter of two Jewish-turned-Quaker professors and she 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.

In 1989, she and co-performer Janet-Marie Ivanka Sunders founded the acclaimed NYC political performance troupe Circus Amok and has directed it ever since. She was also a focus of Tami Gold's documentary Juggling Gender and 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, and NYU.