15 years on the edge

It’s hard to stay on the cutting edge for 15 minutes, let alone 15 years. Just ask anybody at the Santa Monica performance venue Highways as it prepares to celebrate its 15th anniversary this month.

As in dog years, 15 years is a pretty good run for an arts space devoted to progressive aesthetics and cultural politics, not to mention one that’s withstood right-wing attacks, shrunken funding and an often hostile sociopolitical environment. In the face of fire and foes that felled a number of its fellow travelers throughout the country, Highways has hung on.

For that alone, congratulations are in order. As a lead-in to the festivities surrounding the occasion, Highways co-founder Tim Miller will present his latest performance work, “Us,” Friday and Saturday. The anniversary itself will then be marked with mixed bills May 13-15 featuring nearly 50 artists, including veterans from Highways’ 1989 inaugural events, such as John Fleck, Michael Kearns, Keith Antar Mason, Rudy Perez and Rachel Rosenthal.

Yet Highways hasn’t just survived. It has stayed true to its original mandate to nurture and present innovative performance, dance and visual art, with an emphasis on cultural diversity. Whether it’s Denise Uyehara telling the tale of her grandmother’s self-immolation, Sen. Jesse Helms’ bete noir Annie Sprinkle inviting the audience to examine her inner topography in the infamous “Public Cervix Announcement,” Ron Athey’s fetishistic cutting and bloodletting rites, the battle cries of myriad gay and lesbian activist artists, the Sacred Naked Nature Girls dissecting the modern female mythos, or the derring-do of Jacques Heim’s Diavolo Dance Theater, Highways has played host to work that couldn’t find an equally supportive home elsewhere.

“Highways is very on-mission,” says Miller, who cofounded Highways Performance Space not long before he started making national headlines in 1990 as one of the NEA Four, performance artists who successfully sued the National Endowment for the Arts after it dubbed their works indecent and vetoed their grants. “Amid the changes, the community is quite intact, the mission and politics is still being fulfilled -- not the same as it was, but in the ballpark.”

It’s that ballpark, however, that’s cause for debate. Admittedly, the world was a very different place in 1989. Is Highways, to borrow a phrase from the era, Same As It Ever Was? Could it be? Should it be?

Says performer Kearns, a key figure of Highways’ early years: “The space that was known for presenting identity-driven work had an identity challenge: the shift of AIDS consciousness in the mid-’90s, followed by Tim’s departure as artistic director at the end of the decade, ineluctably changed Highways’ image.”

Nor was the shift limited to AIDS consciousness. In Highways’ early years, it showcased many performance art and, to a lesser extent, dance standouts. Yet while some bold talents are still being drawn to Highways, the relation of much of the work to its time is no longer as provocative. The programming has relied heavily on the kind of identity politics that long ago went the way of the multihued mohawk.

“Highways was founded on people who were in major crisis,” says performance artist, educator and curator Danielle Brazell, who served as artistic director from 2000 to 2004 and left to refocus on her own work. “Also, it was so much rooted in ‘90s multiculturalism, which died with the [Los Angeles] riots.”

“While Highways’ act of reinvention has been steady in spite of inevitable setbacks,” Kearns says, “it has been fairly low key when compared to the intensity of those early years.”

Residency controversy

Miller has been touring “Us” since June. As with all of his shows over the past six years, it deals in large part with the fact that he and his partner of 10 years, Australian Alistair McCartney, are facing the prospect of forced emigration because they can’t marry and make McCartney, who teaches at Antioch University, eligible to obtain legal resident status.

Actually, they thought they’d be gone by now. “We keep pulling the poker out of the fire,” Miller explains by phone from New York, where he was taking part in a panel reuniting him with the other three of the NEA Four: Fleck, Karen Finley and Holly Hughes. “Alistair’s work visa runs out in October, and we are completely vulnerable.”

In creating “Us,” Miller turned to Broadway musicals, which he’s loved since his Whittier boyhood. With a backdrop of cast album images in the shape of an American flag, Miller employs his trademark autobiography, poetic whimsy, humor -- and yes, nudity -- to paint what the Chicago Tribune called “a compelling personal vision for a more humble and gay-friendly America.”

This is the kind of work that Highways was created to serve, and ever since it opened it’s been a mecca for young gay men especially, though by no means exclusively. Indeed, a significant portion of the roughly 250 performances presented annually are the work of neophyte artists, typically staged in group tickets or one- to three-day stints rather than longer theater runs.

“I don’t know of any other space like Highways that offers artists a chance to fail and develop,” says Leo Garcia, artistic director since January and a former staff member as well as an artist, teacher, producer and director of shows at Highways since 1995. “We don’t present result-oriented work, although on occasion the programming requires that we look at more developed artists.”

Aaron Hartzler is a case in point. He first learned of Highways when he took a 1998 workshop led by Miller in Tucson. The following year, Hartzler and his partner, Ian Mackinnon, moved to L.A., where Miller gave them a chance to present some short pieces on a bill with other emerging gay artists.

The duo went on to premiere shows each year, including “Spanked,” in which they reflected on their respective relationships with their fathers as well as how those relationships have played out in their own. “Spanked” traveled to the New York Fringe Festival in 2002 and was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award.

“I moved to L.A. to become the next Sean Hayes,” Hartzler says of the “Will & Grace” star. “However, the work that Tim was doing and mentoring us to do was so much more compelling and exciting. Highways is the place where I cut my teeth on the idea that performance can quicken an audience, force them to think, confront people by bringing up feelings that they didn’t know they had.”

Highways has made its mark by nurturing creative talent, rather than developing shows with an eye to transfer to higher-profile or even commercial venues. The emphasis is on the artist, rather than on any given work, and certainly not on “hits.”

When the venue opened, it was one of the few places where a young artist -- or any performance artist for that matter -- could find such support. In those days, LACE also presented performance art, in a large facility downtown. But it has since moved to Hollywood and narrowed its focus to visual arts.

In fact, Highways was and remains one of the few venues in L.A. dedicated to this particular stripe of work. The recent opening of REDCAT adds to this somewhat, but the extent remains to be seen. In some ways, the addition of REDCAT to the performance scene mirrors the addition of Highways in the late ‘80s, when the dominant venue was LACE.

It was long past the late ‘70s when arts funding was comparatively high and encouraged a boom of nonprofit alternative arts spaces across the country. Indeed, Miller had been a co-founder of New York’s PS122 a decade earlier, during that boom. “By 1989, no one was starting these things anymore,” says Miller, who co-founded Highways with Linda Frye Burnham, founder of High Performance magazine. “The world that we brought Highways into was a tough one.”

“I and my national colleagues in the contemporary performance field enthusiastically applauded the announcement that Tim Miller, Lynda Frye Burnham and their team were establishing a new theater at the 18th Street arts complex,” says Mark Murphy, executive director of REDCAT and a founding board member of the National Performance Network. “The need for such an organization was glaringly apparent to us.”

Highways rapidly became home to AIDS activist artists and others. “During those nascent years, so much of the Highways work evolved from the flaming drama of AIDS,” says Kearns, whose contribution to the anniversary shows will be a retrospective of his Highways performances, including “intimacies,” “Camille” and “Queen of Angels,” as well as a gallery of his AIDS portraits. “I was not the only artist whose survival depended upon knowing there was a place where uncensored, unruly and unorthodox responses were nurtured.

“But after about five years or so, AIDS lost its sex appeal,” Kearns continues. “And to a degree, so did Highways, a space known for its often outrageous and always unapologetic response to the plague.”

The change wasn’t only a matter of politics. Solo autobiographical performance, which has been central to Highways’ programming all along, went mainstream with the likes of Spalding Gray, Eric Bogosian, Danny Hoch and others. And gay culture, another mainstay, also began to gain a greater presence in the mainstream media.

In 2000, Miller stepped down to devote all of his time to gay marriage activism. “If there hadn’t been this overarching crisis in my life,” he says, “I would probably have wanted to stay.”

Not surprisingly, Miller’s departure had consequences. “Tim Miller was in the national spotlight,” Brazell says. “Highways was really identified with Tim.”

The venue survived, but not without change. “We changed the culture of the organization,” says Brazell, who increased the presentation of dance during her tenure and also began outreach to new constituencies, including the elderly. “When it was founded it was really about ‘art saves lives.’ That put us in crisis mode all the time, and with the attacks from the right, we couldn’t sustain it. People got tired of Highways being ‘the little space that could.’ We tried to still maintain the identity but to have fun with it and reach other communities. The mission has changed and the forms have changed.”

Money and meaning

From Garcia’s point of view, the biggest challenge will be the financial situation facing the $324,000-a-year organization. Highways’ primary source of income is ticket sales, which account for 40% of its budget, along with 28% in contributed funds from donations, membership fees and the like. Although the venue has received support from private and public agencies over the years, such sources now provide little of its budget.

During the years since Highways started, many nonprofit spaces of similar mission have fallen by the wayside. “Take Chicago, for example: It was once a city with one of the liveliest alternative arts infrastructures in the country,” Miller says. “But then MoMing Dance Space closed, Randolph Street Gallery closed, NAME Gallery closed -- all spaces comparable to Highways.

“We’re stuck between culture war attacks from the right and the disappearance of funding for the arts from the center,” Miller continues. “Mayor [James K.] Hahn wants to gut the L.A. Cultural Affairs Department budget, even though L.A. already has the lowest per capita funding for the arts of all California cities. California, with the virtual wiping out of the [California Arts Council], is now last, 50th, in the U.S. for state funding of the arts.”

For the survivors around the country, such as Highways, PS122, Man Bites Dog in Durham, N.C., Atlanta’s Seven Stages, the Furniture Factory in Detroit and Sushi in San Diego, it’s a matter of adapting to changed times. “You’re fighting hand to mouth in a climate where arts and culture, much less alternative voices, are not valued,” Brazell says. “When I came on, we had to professionalize the organization in a new way. It’s inevitable that it has to be institutionalized to some degree.”

There is a five-year plan, completed last year, to fortify Highways’ infrastructure and to address such matters as aging technology and the lack of an endowment. “It’s a very ambitious plan, and we need to bring more funds in to do that,” Garcia says.

In addition to Miller and the anniversary shows, other coming Highways fare includes a Mothers’ Day variety program featuring such artists as Fleck, dancer Simone Forti and chanteuse Suzy Williams; Hunter Lee Hughes’ multicharacter solo about six people in search of belonging; an evening of “Performance Art for the Gay Soul”; and a bill of UCLA World Arts and Culture student works. But tellingly, it’s Miller and the anniversary shows that are the main event, harking back to the glory days.

The most vital challenge facing Highways is whether it can remain relevant and cutting edge. “Highways is hopefully poised to heat up,” Kearns says. “Perhaps more than any period of time since those early fever-pitched days, Highways can flex its muscles and make some noise.

“At this moment, we are on the precipice of another revolution. As with the AIDS casualties of the Reagan years, the relentless death of young Americans is the result of an administration that is bereft of intelligence and conscience. In those early years, we were not only involved in a performance, we were participating in a revolution.” Brazell too feels that change is in the air. “The country is becoming more and more polarized,” she observes. “We’ll see what happens in the next year. There is going to be a time of activist art, and it’s just a matter of time before that explodes.”

For Miller, as he performs “Us” and worries that he’ll be forced to leave his country come fall, it’s a time of profound ambivalence. “On one level, things are horrible. But I’m actually feeling so much more optimistic,” he says. “In spite of the politics in our country being never more horrifying in my adult life, the lies never bigger and more ugly, I feel people are waking up. And those are moments when Highways and spaces like it become especially important.”