STAGE REVIEW : PERFORMANCE ART TAKES OFF WITH ‘ANGEL’S FLIGHT’

“Angel’s Flight” is a new series devoted to local practitioners of performance art--a phrase often shortened these days to “performance.”

For the next two months, Pipeline and the Museum of Contemporary Art will present a new artist or company each weekend at the Wallenboyd Theatre. By the end, perhaps we’ll have a clearer understanding of the relationship between “performance” and traditional theater.

One thing they have in common is the use of space. But it’s a less important factor in theater (at least non-dance theater) than in “performance.” Just how crucial that the scale of a performance piece be right was demonstrated over the weekend at the first “Angel’s Flight” presentation, featuring Hirokazu Kosaka and his company.

Kosaka’s work has been seen at the Japan-America Theatre, in the “Explorations” series. He is interested in exploring the boundary between religious ritual and performance, with the emphasis on ritual. He performs not as a solo artist but as one of a small band of black-trousered acolytes.

The flavor is Buddhist but many of these rituals strike the Westerner as familiar: chanting from a sacred text, striking a bell at a particularly solemn moment, kneeling before a statue, entering and leaving the altar space in slow procession.

But few church services, East or West, begin with an arrow whizzing across the altar, or end with the bearing-in of a comely tattooed young woman. These tell the viewer that he is also in the domain of theater, where surprises happen.

Then there’s the moment when a wooden beam is carried in, thickly lettered with beautifully inked Japanese characters. A performer begins to plane the beam, and the letters start to peel away. So the mystic sheds the particulars of personality and rejoins the simplicity of the universe. It’s a striking image that could have been sustained longer.

But, on balance, it was just as well that Friday night’s performance was over in less than an hour. Kosaka and company had enacted their ceremony with scrupulous care, and one did get the occasional glimpse of the old Japanese play that was supposed to have inspired it, a lady-into-fox drama called “Kuzo No Ha.” But the space defeated them.

Rather, the lack of space. On the wide stage of the Japan-America Theatre, the performers had plenty of room to make those long entrances and exits, and those arrows traced long invisible lines as they zipped in. Moreover the scenic elements were few--only enough to organize the emptiness.

On the Wallenboyd’s narrow stage, the performers had to work to keep from walking up each other’s heels in the processions. Rather than seeming austere, the stage seemed cluttered with props. The arrows lost their metaphysical quality and became point-blank (and rather nervous-making) weapons. Moreover, the heads of viewers in the front row made it hard for those sitting in back to see.

Instead of a temple, the image was that of an overcrowded kitchen. Intimacy is a virtue in theater, but not when it starts to cramp the performers’ style. If spatial issues are a central part of performance art, they weren’t well thought out here.

Perhaps the other performers on the “Angel’s Flight” series will need less elbow room. Jan Munroe appears this weekend, with performances Friday-Sunday at 8 p.m. After that it’s Lewis MacAdams (Sept. 20-22); Tina Preston (Sept. 27-29); Tim Robbins (Oct. 4-6); Kedric Robin Wolfe (Oct. 11-13); Gilberte Meunier (Oct. 18-20) and Bruce D. Schwartz and Donald Krieger (Oct. 25-27.) ‘KUZO NO HA’ A piece by Hirokazu Kosaka, opening the “Angel’s Flight” series at the Wallenboyd Theatre. Director Kosaka. Light Richard Hayes. Technical director Alex Wright. Assistants Daria Okugawa, Loukia Strathatov, Bob White. Electrician Nick Matonak. Stage assistant Marcela Munoz. Videography Richard Parra. Makeup Keiko Kasai, Kevan Richards. Drapes K. Canoe. Dolls Watanabe Hiroshi, Sakagami Yasuko. With Sakuma Takudo, Mishima Koen, Shimizu Teruo, Hasegawa Hiroshi, Kosaka Hirokazu. 301 Boyd St. (213) 629-2205.