Brian Miller used to be able to fly. He would mount his horse, Lady, no saddle, no bridle, and take off, going as fast as possible, trying to get far away from his family’s farm in Kansas. 

He’d leave at 8 o’clock in the morning and disappear. He’d return at 9 o’clock at night. 

He just wanted to escape. 

Whether that be running away from his farmhouse in rural Kansas, or leaving for New York on a whim or jumping from a plane in Hawaii. 

Now, the IB math teacher is stuck between four brick walls for seven hours every day, more confined than he ever has been. 

Why would someone who has lived a million lives choose this life? 

The answer is simple.

Gut: The one that took him to New York, and said yes to living on the ocean for two years and eventually brought him back to Kansas.  

But before he was at Northwest, explaining derivatives and SOH CAH TOH, the man with a million stories was always searching for his next adventure. 

And it started back then, at night, on the horse.

“I didn’t like the farm too much,” Miller said, “I couldn’t wait to get out.”  

At six, his brother cut his finger off on farm equipment. 

“There he was holding his finger, bone sticking out,” Miller said. 

But Miller found ways to deal with the qualms of farm life, whether that be riding Lady, playing sports, or singing church songs with his family every Sunday. 

Miller’s mother was an opera singer and used to tour with the Christian Women’s Club; his father was the music minister at their church. 

“She got offered things in New York, but she never wanted to leave Kansas,” Miller said. 

But every weekend Miller, his parents and his siblings would get dressed in their Sunday best and tour from church to church singing to the pews filled with people. 

“I would get five bucks, my sister would get 10, and my brother would get 20,” Miller said, “In 73’ that was a crap ton of money.”

But Miller’s favourite escape was school; the 40-mile car ride to Berean Academy with six other classmates was his favourite part of the day. 

With 32 students in his graduating class, Miller had to learn how to do everything: football, basketball, tennis, soccer, music, theatre, really anything he could get his hands on. 

The first time Miller saw a musical was Oklahoma, and his brother played one of the leads, Curly. 

After that, he fell in love. 

“Musicals are always my favourite,” Miller said. “You can say emotions better with a piece of music than you can just in spoken word.” 

But after hours of hobbies, passions and projects, Miller didn’t know what he wanted to do in college. He applied to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and got in. While there, he signed up for a singing audition. Why not. 

“I hadn’t even declared my major,” Miller said. 

He left with a scholarship and a ticket out.

***

The summer after Miller graduated from college, he was working in a cubicle in Wichita staring at the same green computer screen every single day. 

But like he had since he was a kid, he would sing in church on Sunday, and one fateful weekend, a theatre producer was sitting in the pews. 

“They came up to me afterwards, and they’re like, ‘Hey, I’m casting Bye Bye Birdie. I would love if you came down and auditioned,” Miller said. 

A couple of days later, he was Birdie and spent three weeks with the Wichita Centre for the Arts singing hits like “Honestly Sincere” and “One Last Kiss.”

After Birdie, everything started tumbling into motion; bigger producers for bigger shows in bigger cities kept noticing him and asking him to audition for show after show. 

Eventually, he ended up at Musical Theatre Wichita, a summer stock theatre, where they wanted him in three shows that summer and five in the next. 

“I was like, I’m in. And that just led to more things and more things and more things,” Miller said. 

***

In 1991, Miller boarded a plane for the first time: destination, New York City. 

He had subletted an apartment in Queens with cockroaches the size of tanks and barely enough space to fit a bed. But it was something. 

“I loved the city, don’t get me wrong,” Miller said. “But 90’s New York is different than today. It was rough.”

Miller was trying to switch out Wichita for New York and 

He would go to an audition: nothing. 

Another audition: nothing.

Another and another and another, and he still wasn’t booking anything.

“A lot of doors closed in my face,” Miller said. “And that was very eye-opening for a 24-year-old from Kansas.”

After six months in the city and no work, he knew he had to come back to Kansas. 

“I tried to make excuses and be like, ‘Oh, I chose to come back,’ no, I came back because I utterly failed the first time,” Miller said. “Which made it all the more better when I didn’t fail the next time.” 

Back in Kansas, he booked a role in Phantom of the Opera at New Theatre & Dinner. 

“I was like ‘cool, it’s a gig.’ I wanted a gig,” Miller said.

It was in Kansas where he got his union card, and in Kansas where he met his wife, Leah. In 2005, Miller was a guest performer at a theatre in Wichita, where they were performing a musical review of Kander and Ebb songs. 

“I sang ‘Marry Me’ to her the first day of rehearsal, ‘cause that was our song together,” Miller said. “And then a year later, we were married.” 

After years of steady work in Wichita, Miller found his way back to New York. A producer saw Miller in Phantom, and offered him a contract. After a second round of auditions in New York, he got the call that he had booked his first Royal Caribbean contract as a performer on the ship. 

“The first time I got the cruise ship, I was just so ecstatic,” Miller said. “Jumping up and down, like a movie scene.”   

***

“Brian Miller, please pick up the courtesy white phone.” 

The words rang through the airport and stopped Miller in his tracks. He was heading home for the first time in seven months after six months straight of singing on Royal Caribbean. 

And the last thing he was expecting was a phone call. 

Miller put the white phone up to his ear, and that’s when he heard the news. A singer on a different Royal Caribbean ship had broken his leg, and they were supposed to depart from port in a week. 

And they wanted Miller to replace him.

Immediately. 

“No, I need to see my family,” Miller told them. 

“We’ll pay for your family, they can come to the first two weeks of the cruise,” they told him. 

“I really didn’t want to go,” Miller said, “So I threw this astronomical number out.” 

They said yes within seconds. 

Next thing, Miller was travelling through Hawaii, London, Alaska, Panama, Venezuela and Australia, and every night he would be singing, surrounded by glittering showgirls and crowds of awed faces. 

Everything felt unreal. In Miller’s head, he was still that farm kid riding away from home on a horse, and now he was further from Kansas than he could imagine.  

On one of the cruises to Hawaii, Miller skydived, skied, surfed and then scuba dived in the span of two days, all while doing a show every night.

For two years, Miller’s life was all water and adventure, but once he finished his contract, his agent started doubting the possibility of him booking more shows. 

“My agent was like, ‘You’re never gonna work again.’ I got back, and two days later, I had a producer calling me,” Miller said. 

***

Miller was in a room with six other actors, all Broadway alums who could sing, dance and act better than he could imagine.

He had made it to the final callbacks for a Broadway show, the closest he had gotten. 

“Auditions never used to scare me until I got to New York, when I started to see some of the competition,” Miller said. 

As each actor went before him, the realisation slowly hit Miller.

These are the best of the best.

I’m not as good as them. 

Then suddenly the choice presented itself: he would go back to Kansas, back to the farms and the family and the life before the shows. 

The sun was setting, it was almost nine and it was time to turn the horse around.  

Miller read for the part – but at this point it didn’t matter. He was leaving. 

“I came back and started working on my teaching certifications,” Miller said. 

He was pulled to math, the formulas and patterns of the numbers reminded him of the swirling formations of the stage

“I didn’t want music to be my profession,” Miller said, “I still loved music, yes. I just didn’t want that to be how I paid my bills.” 

After teaching at Kansas City Christian for ten years, Miller found his way to Northwest, where he currently teaches precalculus, IB math and music theory. 

Sometimes Miller still misses the magic of the stage, but he finds ways to keep his love alive, from seeing shows, directing shows and occasionally still performing. 

But he is content with a life of grading papers. 

“If I had never acted and only been a teacher, I would have been okay with that,” Miller said, “If I had only been an actor and never gotten to be a teacher, that’s a pretty shallow life.” 

So now the man of a million stories isn’t travelling the world, and he isn’t on Broadway, but he also doesn’t feel that need to escape anymore. 

He gets to be a teacher, have a family and keep a part of his past with him through music. 

“I feel insanely blessed,” Miller said, “I got two different careers that are just amazing.”