HE’S GOT A PIPELINE TO GOOD THEATER

“I was interviewed by a panel recently,” Scott Kelman began, “and they wanted to know what their assurance was that I wouldn’t become commercial. I told them I was commercial and had been most of my life--the only problem was that nobody knew it.”

The artistic director of the innovative, five-year-old Pipeline Inc. (which operates the Boyd St. and Wallenboyd Theatres in an industrial section of downtown) smiled slyly. “Commercial in itself only means that a lot of other people are identifying with what you’re doing, that it’s accessible. That in itself is not a crime. But to be able to appeal to another common denominator, rather than always going for the lowest, is really the difference. Probably what they were questioning was my integrity--if, in fact, I have any left.”

He gave a raspy laugh. “I try to maintain that; it’s important. And I think it’s a lot easier for me than a lot of people. The industry hasn’t got a hold on me--and it’s too late now for them to get it. I mean, I’ve survived this long: I’m over 50, I’ve had three major heart attacks. They don’t have much to offer me.”

The Brooklyn-born Kelman’s idealism is all the more noticeable in the face of his growing attractiveness to the local theatrical mainstream--evidenced in part, by his receiving this year’s Los Angeles Drama Critics’ Circle Margaret Harford Award. It will be presented to him at the awards ceremony on Monday.

“The way to handle (the attention) is to focus on your intentions, rather than this great concern with results,” he said. “It’s also nice to please the critics, but it’s not what the world is about. I got involved in this process over 25 years ago, mainly as a vehicle for revolution, spiritual and political.

“That’s why when things start to happen, like this award, I get a little nervous--like it might make others start having expectations of me. When Joe Chaikin first started the Open Theatre, a lot of people like me were paranoid to a fault: If there was any recognition, it was like, ‘Uh-oh, lock the doors, back off.’ Now I’m finding that I don’t have to fight it. It just means going back to work as soon as you can.”

Yet for him, that “work” is most often associated with play.

“I always thought it was a little silly, the seriousness with which people view artists, as if they’re more important than anyone else. All we’re doing is hammering a nail, right? We’re just doing what we do. When I’m doing a play, or working with a workshop (he leads four groups weekly), all I’m doing is trying to focus on what’s happening--and play with energy, play with rhythms.

“Of course, awards and recognition are very nice,” he added. “They bring in new people. So part of this has to do with expanding the game, bringing in more people for me to play with. I think the biggest problem with most people is that they’ve lost their sense of play.”

Yet Kelman himself acknowledges the difficulty of change. A few years ago, he found himself having to function as an actor, director and producer--a combination that seemed to hold little in common. “Now, it’s all the same,” he shrugged. “I don’t feel that my producing is that different from my performing or running a workshop. It blows my mind that it took so long (to embrace the multiple roles), that I had to be so afraid.”

With old fears behind him, Kelman is forging happily ahead. One ongoing project of which he’s especially proud is Pipeline’s year-old acting ensemble for the homeless, the Los Angeles Poverty Department, whose group-composed “No Stone for Studs Schwartz,” played at Boyd St. earlier this year.

Also continuing is the Angels Flight series, which premiered in 1985, a collaboration between Pipeline and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA).

And the plans don’t stop there: in December, Kelman will introduce “the first West Coast avant-garde arts festival,” hosting groups from England, France, Norway and Belgium, which they then hope to send on the road. “I don’t see any reason why we can’t do it,” he reasoned. “Of course, it’s never been done before. But most of the things I’ve done I never did before.”

The source of his own art?

“I don’t know anymore. Julian Beck’s Living Theatre was a huge inspiration to me in the early ‘60s. And so was Joe Chaikin, the Open Theatre. I started doing some of my own stuff at the same time, influenced by their work. Then later, other influences came into my life, like Eastern philosophy. You never know where one (source) leaves off and you begin. I also worked in a carnival for three years before coming here. And you know, it’s kind of similar to what I’m doing now: that energy, exchange of play.

“That’s what’s so exciting about theater--that they let you do these outrageous things. If I did them on the outside, I’d get locked up, right? But if I do it here. . . .” He laughed. “When people ask me about experimental theater, I always explain to them that the essence of art is experimental. Anybody not experimenting is doing something else.”