STAGE REVIEW : ‘Treasure’ a Forum for Racial Concerns

With its current performance series, “Fire in the Treasure House,” Highways is providing a forum for artists to voice their concerns about the rifts between racial communities in Los Angeles and other cities.

Curators Dan Kwong and Keith Antar Mason have brought together nearly 40 Asian-Pacific-American and African-American performers for the 13-evening series, which lasts until the end of the year. Friday and Saturday’s double bill, titled “Fevers and Visions,” featured L.A. playwright-performer Han Ong’s work-in-progress “Corner Store Geography,” and Atlanta-based performance duo Isis’ “Everybody Knows What Bad Karma Is.”

Ong’s “Geography” is its own multicultural dialogue. In it Ong speaks about life in L.A. in his voice and that of three characters--a Vietnamese-American street hustler, a Mexican-American youth who’s been stabbed, and an African-American magazine writer.

Slides of informational text and of Los Angeles scenes (by Ming Ma, Luis Alfaro and Kelly Stuart) tie the portraits together, but the greatest unity is provided by Ong’s caustic wit, acute perceptions and assured onstage presence.

Ong combines sinuous movement with a mastery of language, from leisurely play with the sound and rhythm of words to free-flowing diatribe. He hits his stride as African-American Sam, who unloads his disgust about “the much vaunted healing” of post-riot L.A. To Sam, that healing is “lollipop liberalism,” the white Establishment’s attempt to “distract angry ethnics” by “microwav(ing) peace into existence.” Ong is still adding new material to “Geography,” but even in this unfinished form it commands attention.

In Isis’ “Everybody Knows What Bad Karma Is,” creator-performers Lolita Woodward and Pamela Wright move about in a simple, futuristic environment of barbed wire and chairs, sometimes interacting, sometimes lost in their own worlds, sometimes talking directly to the audience.

Their work combines snippets of text and children’s rhymes with highly charged movement, underscored by scratch and synthesizer music performed by Renal Earl.

Woodward and Wright’s performance skills are impressive and there’s intelligence and conviction behind their work. Their use of movement to augment and complement language is particularly intriguing. But this piece lacks structure and levels of energy and seems unfinished. However well-wrought the individual parts of this collage, its overall message remains unclear.