Ex-NEA Outcast Hughes Returning With New Grant

All seems forgiven between Holly Hughes and the National Endowment for the Arts.

When Hughes became a charter member of the NEA Four (the artists whose NEA grants were revoked by Chairman John E. Frohnmayer in 1990 for unspecified reasons), censorship of her work was suspected. Hughes, who regularly deals with lesbian themes and issues, feared she would be blacklisted from performance spaces across the country where managers might be fearful of losing NEA grants if they hired her.

But all that appears to be in the past now. Hughes is coming back to town--with an NEA theater fellowship in hand--and will be a large part of Sushi’s new season.

As part of the fellowship, Hughes will be an artist in residence at Sushi Performance Gallery in December, when she will work on a new piece to close Sushi’s 12th season, in a three-week run next June.

Hughes will also offer a workshop and an informal reading of the new work in December.

Meanwhile, a lawsuit challenging the NEA chairman for using political rather than artistic standards for revoking the earlier grants is still pending in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

In past years, all of the NEA Four have been presented at Sushi, a modest performing space where the founder and executive director, Lynn Schuette, prides herself on featuring the cutting edge in performance, dance and visual art.

Another member of the NEA Four, Karen Finley, who also recently received a new NEA grant, will be represented indirectly in December at Sushi when local artists Pamela Underwood and James Barker present the monologues they developed in a workshop with Finley last fall at San Diego State University.

Underwood will perform “Dear Grandaddy,” a story of incest and victimization, and Barker will perform “Sean’s Lament,” about a drag queen, Dec. 5-7.

Sushi’s 12th season begins with two monologues based on interviews and research: the return engagement of San Francisco performance artist Rhodessa Jones in “Big Butt Girls, Hard Headed Women,” about women in prison, Sept. 12-21, and Los Angeles performance artist Joan Hotchkis’ “Tearsheets (Letters I Didn’t Send Home),” about a California ranching family, Oct. 17-20.

The season continues with San Francisco’s Pomo Afro Homos (Postmodern African-American Homosexuals) and their newest work, “Fierce Love,” a collection of stories about the African-American gay experience, Oct. 31-Nov. 2.

Chicago performance theater group Goat Island presents “Can’t Take Johnny to the Funeral,” a work dealing with the dreams of children, Nov. 7-9. New York performance artists Chazz Dean and Kurt Fulton will perform “Sodomite Warriors,” a story of the gay male culture’s relationship with the straight culture, Nov. 21-23.

Blackfriars Theatre, formerly known as the Bowery Theatre, has finalized plans for its four-play 1991-92 season of San Diego premieres.

As previously announced, the season begins with Beth Henley’s “Abundance,” a revisionist Western tale about the friendship between two mail-order brides in Wyoming in the 1860s, Sept. 29-Nov. 17, and continues with “More of the Laughing Buddha Wholistik Radio Theatre,” which features new installments in the theater’s popular “Laughing Buddha Wholistik Radio Theatre,” Dec. 8-Jan. 5.

Ralph Elias, artistic director of Blackfriars, will direct “Abundance,” and Todd Blakesley, who co-wrote both “Laughing Buddha” scripts with Burnham Joiner, will direct “More of the Laughing Buddha.”

Exact dates will be set later for a mid-February opening of “The Puppetmaster of Lodz,” French playwright Gilles Segal’s story of a Jewish puppeteer at the end of World War II who will not come out of hiding when the Holocaust is over.

Segal is a Romanian-born Holocaust survivor who long ago established a career in France as an actor, playwright and television screenwriter. The play had its American premiere in 1988 at the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, where it was a critical and commercial hit, according to Sara O’Connor, the Milwaukee Rep’s managing director, who translated the play. Elias will direct the San Diego production.

The season concludes with Simon Gray’s “Stage Struck,” opening in late April, with a director to be announced. This comedy thriller, which debuted in London in 1979, tells the story of a stage manager’s clever but deadly staging of events in his own life.

In Vista, Moonlight Amphitheatre will expand its third annual winter season to include four plays this year: “Little Shop of Horrors,” Nov. 21-Dec. 8; “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” Jan. 30-Feb. 16; “You Can’t Take It With You,” March 12-29, and a Youth Theatre Production of “Charlotte’s Web,” Jan. 9-19. All productions will be performed at the 180-seat Moonlight Winter Playhouse, 1200 Vale Terrace Drive.

PROGRAM NOTES: Sean Murray, who will conclude his starring role as Dr. Frank N. Furter in the San Diego Repertory Theatre’s long-running “The Rocky Horror Show” on Aug. 11, already has another gig lined up. This longtime San Diego Rep veteran makes his Old Globe debut as Ariel in “The Tempest” at the Lowell Davies Festival Stage, Aug. 30-Oct. 6. Adrian Hall will direct. “The Tempest” also stars Richard Easton as Prospero, Jonathan McMurtry as Gonzalo, Vaughn Armstrong as Antonio, Julian Gamble as Sebastian, Richard Kneeland as Stephano, Stephen Markle as Caliban and Dierk Torsek as Alonso. . . .

Derin Altay, who made her Broadway debut as “Evita,” replacing Patti Lupone, will star in Starlight Musical Theatre’s “Evita” at the Starlight Bowl 15-25. Also starring are David Wasson as Juan Peron, Tim Bowman as Che, Sal Mistretta, who repeats his Broadway and Los Angeles performances as Magaldi, and San Diego native Beverly Ward, who plays Peron’s mistress. Javier Velasco, who just choreographed “Kiss Me Kate” for Starlight and “Anything Goes” for the Moonlight Amphitheatre, will appear as a tango dancer. . . .

The Great American Children’s Theatre Company will bring “The Wind in the Willows” to San Diego’s Spreckels Theatre March 2-7. The show is produced in association with the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera. . . .

The Old Globe has a limited number of $8.50 tickets for seniors for today’s 8 p.m. performance of “Necessities” at the Cassius Carter Centre Stage. Tickets are on sale at the Clairemont Senior Center, 4425 Bannock Ave.