Rick Miller takes on boomers in new solo play

Rick Miller, creator of Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival hit MacHomer, is back in Winnipeg with a solo show about the baby boomer generation.

Miller's play BOOM premiers in Winnipeg at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre's John Hirsch Mainstage on Thursday.

The play has already toured across Canada over the last year and a half and by the end of the run in Winnipeg BOOM will have been performed 255 times, said Miller.

BOOM tells the story of the boomer generation through more than 100 voices, all created by Miller, and through central characters based on Miller's own family.

"There's a lot of commercial clips and movie clips and there are three or four main characters who are more or less based on my parents who provide the narrative thread," he said.

Miller tries his hand at imitating the voices of icons of the 1960s, including: Pierre Trudeau, Martin Luther King, and Janis Joplin.

"People feel they're seeing something very special they can't get on Netflix," he said.

Miller said hecreated BOOMto appeal to a broad range of ages, not just boomers looking for a bit of nostalgia.

"I never create a show for a particular audience," he said.

Miller hopes people come to the show with multiple generations to spur conversations about the play.

"So that we understand not how different we are because that's kind of obvious but how similar we are," he said.

He said BOOM explores the "building blocks" of the boomer generation but it has relevance in 2016 as well.

"It really is something that we've constructed so that it resonates with today. If anything it tells us more about where we're going than about who we were," said Miller.

Through creating BOOM, Miller said he learned a great deal about the counter-cultural generation and he said he wanted to impart what he learned to his audience.

"Politics and culture were so tied together," he said of the boomer generation. It was an "amazing" time to be alive, he said.

"I don't just want to put on a wig and sing JanisJoplin I really want to connect with what motivated that kind of music," said Miller.

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