What do acting, graphic design and social awareness have in common?
They are three things Downtown Phoenix resident Nina Miller is passionate about and spends most of her time doing.
Miller is an improvisation and main-stage actress who performs at local theaters, a graphic designer in Michael Crow’s office at Arizona State University and a contributor to community projects in the Phoenix area.
Photo by Evan Wyloge
“(People) always say do for a living what you did for play when you were a kid,” Miller says. “My three favorite things to do were playing with the typewriter, coloring with crayons and making up stories with my friends. I ended up being a graphic designer and an actor, and I think it makes a lot of sense.”
Miller, who grew up in Minnesota, started acting when she was 15 years old. With no stage experience, she auditioned for and landed the role of Dyslexia, an eccentric secretary, in the comedic murder mystery Death by Chocolate.
In 1995, Miller left Minnesota and headed to ASU, where she decided to pursue a theater degree after experimenting with theatrical set and costume design. When she graduated in 1999, Miller had no desire to leave Arizona. She used her theater degree to work at the mall, but soon realized she needed to find another way to make a living.
“Being an actor in Phoenix for a living is really, really difficult, if not impossible, which is what I learned quickly after graduating,” Miller says. She adds that she wanted to be able to choose her acting projects based on what interested her rather than when her rent was due.
Miller went back to ASU in 2001 to study graphic design and obtained her degree in 2005. That same year, she began working for Crow. Miller has also taught design courses at ASU, and is currently working on her master’s degree in graphic design at the university.
Miller says she has noticed a big change at ASU since she first attended about 15 years ago.
“When I got here, I guess I perceived people not really valuing education as much,” Miller says. “When I went back to school, I was noticing that energy was shifting a little bit.”
Although she does not act for a living, Miller says it is a great hobby to have and she believes it will always be part of her life.
“For a while, I was really thinking that I was walking away from it and rejecting it entirely because it just wasn’t what I was expecting of it,” she says. “But, I think I’ve really embraced the fact that I don’t want to be a star.”
Miller has done main-stage performances at Stray Cat Theatre in Tempe, but says it is a tremendous time commitment. She performs improv at The Torch Theatre, which she says is a little more flexible with her schedule. Improv may be less time consuming, but Miller says it is still a challenge.
“Acting is hard in a totally different way, but improvising makes your brain work,” she says. “It’s like working out for your brain. It’s fantastic.”
Miller also participates in a training program at The Torch Theatre, which she entered into last summer. In the first level, her teachers encouraged her to start performing because of her previous stage experience. She realized she was learning just as much from performing, and began searching for more ways to do so in Phoenix. She is now in the process of starting a Herald-style improv troupe that currently has five members. She hopes to increase that number to about seven or eight.
When Miller isn’t designing or acting, she spends her time getting involved in the community. One of the projects she is involved with is the MADPHX (Making a Dent in Phoenix) podcasts, which she started with a group of people from the Phoenix area.
“All of us were just really concerned about Phoenix, and about what the community is and the direction it’s going,” she says. “Our whole point is, let’s not just complain about Phoenix and what isn’t happening, let’s talk about what is happening and the proactive ways things are changing.” The group tries to meet every other week to record its conversations and has released eight podcasts at press time.
Miller says that whatever activities she decides she wants to do, she’s finding ways to do them in Phoenix.
“Social awareness, design, performance; if I can mash all that up, I’m a pretty happy person.”
