P.S. 122 Goes Back to School

What do Molissa Fenley, John Kelly, Reno and Danny Hoch have in common? At first glance, the celebrated dancer-choreographer, the veteran performance artist, the edgy comedian and the young multi-character soloist may not seem to share a genre, let alone an aesthetic.

Yet while they all have earned track records on their own, they can be grouped under the rubric of experimental performance. And that’s why they’re currently sharing the bill in “Field Trips,” which arrives at the Veterans Wadsworth Theater on Friday, presented by the UCLA Center for the Performing Arts.

For the program, Fenley will present the L.A. premiere of “Regions,” a work inspired by the dancer’s recovery from a major knee injury last year. Hoch will offer a work in progress called “Evolution of a Home Boy,” with his characteristic panoply of urban personas. Kelly will perform “Selected Songs and Arias by Kurt Weill, Richard Peaslee and Joni Mitchell.” And brassy, acerbic commentator Reno will weigh in with excerpts from “Citizen Reno.”

“Field Trips” is the traveling road show from Performance Space 122, the experimental arts venue on New York’s Lower East Side. While this lineup has been seen in 15 cities since February, the last time “Field Trips” stopped in Los Angeles was in 1988, at LACE.

The alternative arts have seen a world of trouble since then, which is why “Field Trips” has become a more commercial venture. Launched during a time when there was much greater support for experimental performance, “Field Trips” originally served as a showcase for emerging and often cutting-edge artists. Now, however, it features only artists with reputations, the kind who can bring in the box office.

“We decided to go outside the list of artists who normally perform at P.S. 122 and include master artists that have a greater national reputation,” said Artistic Director Mark Russell, speaking by phone from New York.

“I felt like I needed some real leaders to be the ambassadors,” he continues. “But I still feel that they are representative of the contemporary culture that P.S. 122 professes.”

P.S. 122 has always promoted experimentation. The venue--launched in 1979 by dancer-choreographer Charles Moulton and performance artists Charles Dennis, Tim Miller (who would go on to found Highways in Santa Monica) and Peter Rose--was intended to serve as a hotbed for the emerging genre of performance art.

Virtually from its opening, P.S. 122 became known among the burgeoning downtown New York arts community as a place for novice and veteran performance and dance artists to develop new work.

The venue was also busier than most, with as many shows as possible crammed into the schedule.

P.S. 122 “has always had a very working-class ethic toward performance,” says Russell, who has headed the organization since 1983. “We have over 300 events a year, from a wide variety of communities. We mix and match. It’s not just the cutting edge of art.”

In 1986, the venue doubled its programming by converting a former gymnasium in the building into a second performance space and theater. Shortly thereafter, the “Field Trips” program was launched.

Backed by a generous three-year grant from a private foundation--an organization that Russell says prefers to remain unnamed, even at this point--the touring show was planned to spread the gospel of alternative performance art and dance, taking such work to cities that didn’t necessarily have alternative arts venues.

Soon after, however, came the trouble encapsulated by the attacks of political conservatives against the National Endowment for the Arts. And as the battle has worn on, government support has shriveled.

With the loss of dollars has come an increase in public skepticism. Not surprisingly, P.S. 122 and its sister spaces around the nation began to feel the pain.

“P.S. 122 did not take any direct hits during the main firestorm,” says Russell, referring to tactics by politicians such as Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) that highlighted specific artists, exhibitions and performances. “But across the country it’s been a very subtle freezing out and discounting of contemporary work. It’s pernicious.”

The evolution of “Field Trips” illustrates the point.

“Once we started, the freeze came in and the whole [NEA imbroglio] happened,” Russell says. “So by the end of the three-year grant, even though we were getting great reviews, [the anonymous foundation] decided that they could not fund it.”

And that, he says, is typical of the way in which the damper has been put on experimental work: “It’s very rare that you can catch a direct censorship. I call it an economic censorship. [Funders] say, ‘Our resources are shrinking, our agenda is changing.’ In some cases, it’s very real. But the effect is that it’s harder to do contemporary works of scope.”

Russell vowed to keep touring “Field Trips” anyway, using what remained of the foundation grant, earned income and some shrinking NEA money.

As the NEA’s problems continued, P.S. 122 managed to escape the worst of it--even though the venue had presented just as many of the targeted artists as other spaces that were attacked more directly. All of the so-called NEA Four artists who had their grants rescinded--Miller, Karen Finley, Holly Hughes and John Fleck--had performed at P.S. 122.

“We were doing things at that time that would have outraged a whole bunch of people,” Russell says.

Still, P.S. 122 was never hauled into the public eye. “We are not as easy to demonize, because of the range of programming,” says Russell. “And maybe we were not as high profile as Franklin Furnace or the Kitchen.”

Even without being singled out, though, P.S. 122 has suffered. For the past three years, for example, there has been no more NEA money for “Field Trips.”

Yet P.S. 122 isn’t ready to throw in the towel. Instead, Russell and his collaborators are turning to new strategies to stay afloat while depending on profitable ventures such as “Field Trips” to help pay the bills.

“It is a money-getting operation for us,” Russell says. “It is helping to support our core programs, and we are really trying to reach a larger audience. That’s why instead of LACE, we’re playing UCLA. We’ve been doing heavy touring.”

Private sponsorship has become a crucial element, he explains, noting that “we’ve been supported by earned income and, this year, by a substantial grant from Philip Morris.”

That last windfall, though, is not without a certain irony. Philip Morris Inc. has, after all, come under attack in past years because of its tobacco products and its backing of Helms, one of the chief instigators of the anti-NEA campaign and an outspoken adversary of precisely the kind of art that P.S. 122 proffers.

Unlike some, however, P.S. 122 has continued to accept funding from Philip Morris for the past decade, up to and including the “Field Trips” sponsorship.

“Philip Morris has been a healthy supporter of the arts,” Russell says. “You don’t get that many nice choices when you decide to try for corporate sponsorship.”

In addition to seeking corporate sponsorship, P.S. 122 has also had to find ways to lose less money.

“We used to [operate on] 30% earned income, and now we are at 55% earned income,” Russell says. “I’ve had to raise my ticket prices from $8 to $12. I rely more on individual donations and benefits. We have to really dig deep to find ways to make the budget work.”

P.S. 122 has also increased its already packed schedule in New York. This month, for example, the space will host 50 shows. And on a recent weekend, there were four shows each night.

It is, in essence, a brave (and scary) new world for the alternative arts in the mid-1990s. “All of the rules in not-for-profit have gone out the window,” Russell says.

“Without the main leadership organization, which was the NEA, it is hard, even beyond the lack of funding,” he continues. “No one is saying to the corporate world [that] these people deserve sponsorship.”

And venues like P.S. 122 weren’t designed to be moneymakers.

“These organizations were made to lose money in the right way, not [to run] on a profit basis,” Russell says. “Finding the balance between the two worlds is difficult.”

While Russell and others aren’t about to give up, they are not confident about the years ahead.

“We take it day by day, year by year,” he says. “The future on some days does not look very bright at all. One of the hardest parts is trying to keep an optimistic view and at the same time mourning and grieving for a life that is passing for us. It actually feels like an abandonment by the culture.”

Still, Russell says, “it’s a challenge to get creative in all manners, and that’s been bracing and fun. And the work is still sharp and out there, worth seeing and supporting. That’s what saves it.”

“FIELD TRIPS,” P.S. 122, Veterans Wadsworth Theater, Veterans Administration Grounds, Brentwood. Date: Friday. Prices: $23.50-$26.50. Phone: (310) 825-2101.