When Will the Taper’s Power Brokers Wake Up?

Pardon me, but is it really true? Did I read right? Anna Deavere Smith, the remarkable Palo Alto-based artist, whose highly acclaimed “Fires in the Mirror” piece about racial and religious strife in the Crown Heights section of New York, is being commissioned by the

Mark Taper Forum to research and write and perform a one-woman piece about the recent civil disturbances in Los Angeles ? (“Taper Holds Slot for Riot Examination,” Calendar, July 26).

Well (deep breath). Thus ends the debate, if any question still remains among all of you L.A. artists who continue to live and work and process your creative output through the limited channels offered in this enormous city.

I don’t even have to finish that sentence, do I? New York clearly comes out the winner in any contest over artistic quality. Or perception. And true to form, the Taper leads the way in crowning artistic merit born out of New York. Even when the events that spawned the debate took place right here. Even when it was our artistic community that woke up with its sky filled with ashes and its banks and stores burned and looted, and its theaters nearly empty, and its artists forming emergency coalitions to grapple with the meaning of it all.

Taper, awake! Send some of your staff out into this community surrounding your Bunker Hill bunker. Pay attention. We are starving to be nourished and to grow. Listen to the artists of “Seoul to Soul,” the evening of performances for social change assembled by Mari Sunaida, which, for the first time, included Korean and African-American works on the same program.

Listen to the artists Wanda Coleman and Sunaida have assembled for their special High Performance-issued CD, “The Verdict and the Violence.” Send a scout or two down to the Church in Ocean Park to learn something powerful and transforming and brave from the courageous improv group, the Wims.

Call Highways and find out why Keith Antar Mason and the Hittite Empire were commissioned first by the Serious Fun Festival in New York to do their piece on the L.A. uprising, “49 Blue Songs for Jealous Vampire” (see Calendar’s reprinted rave from Newsday on July 21).

Are you colonial carpetbaggers, or just farsighted?

Smith’s fine work needs to be seen here, and her future as a creative artist should be endorsed. But please, look first to the people who walked through the flames. Here.

You may think we are standing by, waiting for some outside arbitration to tell us how to fix ourselves. Or how to feel. You may think we, as artists, are not quite “hot” enough to pass muster.

But rest assured, we are working. And we’re watching. We’re not going to let you ignore the sore on your hand while you reach for someone else’s prescription.