The New Face of Arts Leadership in the West - westaf - The Western ...

seems to me that that audience isn’t going
to be very happy about that. The Mark Taper
Forum should suffer pain at the box office.
I am suggesting that perhaps what appeared to
be nurturing at the time really wasn’t nurture. I
suggest that the roots of that nurturing did not
go very deep into the institution. That must be
the case if, after 20 years, the programs can be
cancelled. My institutional experience is that
when you cut, there should be pain—my experience
is there is pain. When the California Arts
Council cut all of its grant programs, there was
pain in the field, people without work; people
with mortgages and families now had their
incomes reduced. All of a sudden, people had
to find something else to do besides being artists
working in schools and community centers.
And there was pain, and there is pain. So, I
guess I don’t agree that these programs were
nurtured much by an institution that stated it
was deeply committed to the issue of diversity.
Danielle Brazell: I will rephrase the issue. I
believe the people who ran the labs and, I think,
the artistic director of the organization, were
in fact deeply committed to the programs.
Through the programs, an artist could come in
at an emerging level, and the Taper could then
leverage its visibility for that artist, and that artist
could go on to achieve and have doors opened
for him or her that would never have been
opened before. They had a regional platform
from which they could really help and nurture.
Although I feel that the audience is going to
feel the pain, I don’t know how much they are
aware of what the ramifications of the labs
being cut are going to be. So, I think there will
be a time span in which the audience is going
to look at its subscriber series and ask, “Where is
Luis Alfaro? Where is Brian Freeman? Where is
the Blacksmiths Program? Where am I going to
plug in?” Perhaps there is a smaller organization
like Highways Performance Space that is
sponsoring a series that could possibly connect
with some of that information and market
and bring some of those displaced audience
members into their houses. But that is not an
opportunity. These smaller organizations don’t
have the resources of the larger institutions.
Juan Carrillo: When Zoot Suit was produced
at the Mark Taper, it was the most successful run
they had ever had in their history. They were
able to buy another theater out of the profits.
You know, buying downtown space in L.A. is
not cheap. That run allowed them to buy the
Aquarius Theatre on Sunset Boulevard. But Luis
Valdez was never invited to direct there again. I
question the deep nurturing, the rooting process.
There is some evidence that it didn’t go as
deep as one might have hoped or thought.
Brenda Allen: Are there others who share your
deep sense of anger, of dismay? Have you all
sat down to do some kind of collaboration to
think about systematic responses and reactions?
There is a history of groups of people
being pissed off and doing something about
it, and sometimes it takes time. But this requires
a concerted effort. Before undertaking such
a process, one needs to think about what it
is you want to accomplish. Is it the idea of
being able to present, being able to nurture,
being able to bring in newer people? What
are some alternative ways of getting at that?
I understand what you are saying, and it is
almost like a reliance on these other institutions
and sources without seeming to think
about what, if anything, can I do differently?
James Early: I don’t think there are any alternatives
to the public space. One of the things
that I think marginalized people face—whether
they are people of color, whether they are rural
Whites, or whether they are recent European
immigrants—is the struggle to be ourselves
against the public rather than to be ourselves
in the public. We are the public. Politicians
validate themselves through us. This is when they
do count us. They say, “This belongs to all of us,
we the people.” Some of us are there, but we
are not holding, we are not nurturing those who
are there. So, they look like us, but they turn into
them. We have to help them stay themselves,
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