BOOM X takes on 25 years of Gen X at warp speed

By Meredith MacLeodJan 12, 2026

Rick Miller’s one-man show is a fun revisiting of 1970 to 1995, but also a reminder that generations have been tested before. It runs at Theatre Aquarius from Jan. 21 to Feb. 7.

It’s well appreciated that looking at the past helps us understand the present. So, in testing and confounding times such as these, the nostalgic kaleidoscope that is Rick Miller’s BOOM X, opening soon at Theatre Aquarius,may be just what we need.

In a trilogy of BOOM shows, Miller is a tour guide on 75 years of history, headlines, pop culture interspersed with his own family’s story. It started with BOOM, which documented the coming of age of his parents’ generation. BOOM X is Miller’s own Gen X story, and BOOM YZ looks at Miller’s kids’ maturation into adulthood.

As an entertainer, Miller really does it all. He’s a writer, director, producer, actor, comedian, impressionist, and musician. He brings that all to bear in BOOM X, in which over the course of 100 minutes, he embodies more than 100 celebrities, politicians and other public figures, along with people from his own life that help to tell his story.

BOOM X starts in 1970 in the heart of the October crisis in Miller’s hometown of Montreal and ends in 1995 at the end of the second Quebec referendum. It’s part autobiography, part jukebox, part news reel, and all nostalgic entertainment played out at warp speed. BOOM X combines historical video, audio interviews, music and depictions of technology, with Miller’s physicality and vocal impressions, to revisit disco, punk, the Cold War, Reaganomics, the AIDS crisis, the oil shortage, Watergate, Pierre Trudeau, and the British Invasion.

Rick Miller in *BOOM X*. Photo (and above): Craig Francis

Through conversations with four characters in Miller’s own coming-of-age journey, he explores his own search for identity, and rapidly changing attitudes towards racism, sexism and homophobia. In that way, BOOM X is both universal and highly personal.

“In and around the joy and celebration of a crazy cultural time of the music of punk and disco and New Wave and heavy metal and grunge is everything else we're talking about,” says Miller, who has performed BOOM X 450 times around the world since it debuted in 2019.

“It's the urge for connection, meaningful connection, in an age when it seems kind of baffling about how to do it. So I think that urge for humour, humanity, heart is in the music that ties it all together is what comes across.”

Miller hopes the trilogy goes some distance in helping the generations understand and appreciate the struggles of one another, and then work together.

“We’ve been through a lot of things before, and the world seemed pretty dark for my parents at a certain stage of their life, just like it might feel now. We can pull through this. That sense, I think, permeates through every show in the trilogy, and I think it represents probably what I like to bring into the world.”

*BOOM X* plays at Theatre Aquarius from Jan. 21 to Feb. 7. Photo: Irina Litvinenko

Miller says the show is about a search to make sense of a time, a search that is both joyful and painful but, ultimately, a unique theatre experience. A big step towards making it through the state of the world today will be listening to each other, he says.

“If we listen to our young people and not dismiss them, and listen to our elders and not dismiss them, then maybe we can actually stop repeating the same mistakes over and over again and see that history doesn't necessarily repeat itself, but as some people say, it rhymes, it has an echo,” he says.

Miller says while he’s generally a quiet person off stage, he enjoys wowing audience with the rapid-fire, relentless fun of his BOOM shows.

“That sense of wonder, which is part of why theatre still exists, is because we are performing. It's meant to be impressive, so that we leave an impression. But also because I just find the challenge of doing a solo show, even though it is very cooperative with a crew, it all sits on my shoulders, and I've always embraced it. I don't get nervous. I'm one of those lucky people who just gets excited about taking high dives and BOOM, the whole trilogy, is a big high-wire act.”

Miller had just finished touring with MacHomer, his highly successful blending of The Simpsons and Shakespeare’s Macbeth, when a “biblical double bill of Tim Rice musicals” about 25 years ago brought him to the Theatre Aquarius stage. He was Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar and then was Simeon in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.

Rick Miller in *BOOM X*. Photo: Craig Francis

That time led him to creating a play called Bigger Than Jesus, his own reimagining of his mom's Catholic faith in the time of 9/11.

When that show wrapped around 2012, Miller was left wondering what came next. He thought he might explore music in some way. Then his dad started sharing stories of growing up in war-torn Vienna that Miller had never heard before.

“He had a swastika in his class for Hitler Youth. When you're in annexed Austria, you had to follow orders.”

So BOOM became a personal documentary, starting with his parents, then himself, and finally his daughter on her way to university. BOOM YZ ends with the audience using their phones to vote on the kind of future they want to see.

“I'm not interested really in nostalgia just for nostalgia sake, I think it's fine, but it's not very productive. And as someone who likes to build things, I don't think it builds a better future by just being nostalgic about the past. So I always knew that I wanted to use a show that got us to the present moment, and in the present moment we then choose our future.”

Miller, who has two architecture degrees from McGill, says he’s put that way of thinking — structural, yet artistic — into designing and building his own shows.

BOOM X covers the years 1970 to 1995. Photo: Irina Litvinenko

“And so I consider my little theatre projects like temporary architecture. I build, I design, I live in it. Other people sometimes live in it with me. And then it's done, and then it moves on.”

On the day Miller speaks to HAMILTON CITY Magazine, he has been workshopping his newest project, Money, which follows the wealth and fortunes of eight characters over 40 years, from 1988 to 2028. It explores how the intersection of money, power and technology are shaping the future of human civilization.

Money tackles a big subject with a big cast, something Miller enjoys after spending so much time in solo shows.

“I love to do that as the full range of being an artist. I mean, solo works are not any less collaborative than big pieces, but there is a joy in performing with another player on stage.”

Miller is founder and creative director of WYRD Productions, which produces new theatrical works, and co-creative director of Kidoons, which creates both live and online kids educational entertainment for a variety of partners.

“Yes, I wear a lot of hats, and I wear them proudly, given that, I think a lot of people in the cultural industry are quaking a little bit right now. But I think we have to take big swings, and we have to embrace big projects for Canadian culture to thrive and survive. So I guess I wear a lot of hats, because that’s what it takes.”