“This is a farewell show. ZM3 Live Productions is closing its doors,” says Zell Miller III, whose production company has been presenting shows in Austin for over two decades. “We didn't get funding again, so this is a farewell show. So it's A to Z, all things in between.”
As Miller enters this transitional period of his artistic life – ZM3 is closing but Miller has no plans to stop creating art – he’s doing one last show at Hyde Park Theatre. From A to Z and All Parts In Between will be a heartfelt goodbye to the city and to this part of Miller’s performing life. “It is an intimate night of me and my musician Thomas Wheeler,” Miller says, “and I'm going to be telling true live stories about living in Austin for over 50 years, being an artist for over 26 years. Amazing stories of how like one day… I met Ann Richards. I was catching the bus by the old Ronald McDonald House right off of Trinity. Her limo pulls up, she rolls the window down. She's like, Hey! and I'm like, Hey! And so we started having this conversation. And then the light turned green and [to] her driver, she said, ‘Don't you leave, don't you take off. I'm talking.’ And so we had this amazing conversation.”
Not all of Miller’s interactions with local politicians went as well. He’ll also be sharing the story of “how I almost got into a fight with Kirk Watson, when he was running for mayor the first time, in front of the municipal building on 4th Street.” He adds, with a laugh, “I've had some ups and downs!”
He’ll also be covering some more personal stories. “The birth of my children,” he says. “You know, being married a second time and that whole thing. So it's going to be those stories with poetry and while I'm telling stories or doing poetry, Thomas is going to be creating live sound under whatever we're doing.”
Miller says closing ZM3 Live Productions isn’t about ending his artistic or performing life, but about needing to find a new approach to what it means to be a working artist. Even as Austin’s current – and first ever – poet laureate, he’s struggled financially to produce work in the city. “I'm tired of fighting in Austin, and for money,” he says. “So… we might, you know, regroup and go a nonprofit route. We might really look at what it means to tour. Given that I'm the poet laureate now, this is the first time in my life I'm a full-time artist. So I'm looking at every avenue and every door and starting to look at things I didn't look at before about how to move work around and how to do it. I'm finally working on a book. So we're going to be getting out on the road to support that book. That'll be happening in ‘26, going into ‘27, into ‘28, and then we'll see what happens along the way.”
For From A to Z, Miller says he’s created a fond farewell. “It's really like a love letter to Austin,” he says. “We're just saying bye. We're saying thank you. We're saying we hope you appreciated what we've done for over 20 years. And, you know, we'll see if the voice is needed or wanted for the future and what that may look like, how we may come back again. But we are closing the doors on this chapter. I would want people to take away just the love of the city, some of the characters that are in the city, and I hope that they take away the work that we brought [to Austin]. We were a unique voice for Black people, but we also told American love stories in the city of Austin, Texas.”
Miller emphasizes again that this is the end of only one chapter of his artistic life. “I will continue to do art. I'll continue to write. I'll continue to perform. Where and how that looks, we're not sure.”
'From A to Z and All Parts In Between' will run at Hyde Park Theatre through September 13.
