PERFORMANCE ART : An Engaging Hughes Work in Progress

At one point in her new “Dead Meat,” Holly Hughes says she dreams of becoming “beautiful and dangerous.”

Her dream may be coming true, thanks to the National Endowment for the Arts.

As one of four solo performers whose peer-panel-recommended grants were recently rejected by endowment chairman John Frohnmayer and the National Council on the Arts--in a controversial decision that stirred up a whirlwind of publicity--Hughes is suddenly something of a celebrity. Those who were outraged by the decision may assume she’s beautiful in her martyrdom. At least some of those who applauded the decision apparently assume she’s dangerous.

Neither reaction is quite right, judging from “Dead Meat,” at Highways in Santa Monica.

Hughes is too sharp-edged to play the role of beautiful martyr. In fact, in the second of three parts in “Dead Meat,” she confesses that “I’m being forced to play a character I don’t understand,” and she assigns the role of “Holly Hughes” to the audience, while she plays a skeptical television inquisitor who raises many of the same points that endowment opponents have made about Hughes’ own grant. By audaciously playing devil’s advocate, Hughes provokes an audience that’s clearly on her side to examine their knee-jerk support, always a healthy exercise.

Another indication that she’s no martyr: As her program states, “Dead Meat” is “supported by a grant to Holly Hughes from the Inter-Arts program of the National Endowment for the Arts”--a different endowment program from the solo performance category in which she was rejected. Hughes also was awarded an endowment playwright’s grant earlier this year. The veto of Hughes’ latest grant raises graver questions about the endowment than it does about the continuation of Hughes’ career.

So is she dangerous? Only if you find explicit references to lesbian sex dangerous.

Most of these are in the first part of “Dead Meat.” For this performance, Hughes is clad in a short black dress and red and black tights and struts out to the accompaniment of Paul Anka singing “She’s a Lady.” She’s carrying a tray as if she’s a waitress in a red-Naugahyde lounge.

She begins a rambling monologue that combines stand-up comedy with a few tentative references to the more somber side of her life. The language shouldn’t shock anyone who has frequented comedy clubs or small urban theaters in the last 20 years. And Hughes disarms any criticism of the piece’s structure with the show’s subtitle--”a sampler platter of a work in progress.” She’s not claiming this is a finished piece.

She also stipulates that “I’m a terrible actress. What I have going for me is a fabulous personality.” We don’t see much acting, so it’s hard to judge whether it would be terrible, but she does come across as the life of any party that might be lucky enough to have her. She moves with sly, seductive authority, and she gets her laughs.

Her more serious moments seem somewhat stunted--and she deliberately undercuts the litany of horrors that ends this section by munching on a taco as she talks. Anyone who expects a screaming diatribe will be disappointed.

It’s in the last part of “Dead Meat” that Hughes the writer shines. She returns to the waitress motif--but instead of parading around the stage with her tray, she sinks into a black chair and, in shadowed lighting (designed by Rand Ryan), exhales a reminiscence about working the dreary daytime shift at the Red Lobster.

She speaks into a hand-held microphone with a low-key but mesmerizing delivery reminiscent of Joe Frank. As she speculates about the nature of the secret ingredient in the restaurant’s hush puppies, the imagery is precise, funny and evocative of larger concerns, yet hardly inflammatory.

Kate Stafford directed.

At 1651 18th St., Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:30 p.m., through July 28. $10; (213) 453-1755.