Statements by John Malpede, founder, artistic director

Notes gathered, edited and organized by Ferdinand Lewis.

[Interviewer’s note: At the point that this research project began, LAPD was going on hiatus, for lack of funds. I spoke to Malpede, who was in Amsterdam for a several-month-long residency, which began shortly after "" the last show, closed. Although 15 years may not seem like a long history, the scope of LAPD's mission, and the almost insurmountable obstacles that any ensemble would face in a community like Skid Row, shows LAPD's record to be remarkable by any standards.

If LAPD has done anything, it has, as Malpede puts it, "confounded expectations," of what the arts can do in a community of the dispossesed, but also of what art can do, period: The power of this group's work is a burr under the saddle of those who would segregate community-based art from "high art." If the postmodern era has anything to teach, it is that the modern concept of beauty is so constrictive that it contributes not only to our cultural asphyxia, but also to attitudes and legislation that will sacrifice cultures, species and the entire planet's ecological health to extend the march of progress just a few more steps. Although LAPD disregards the aesthetic standards that are the basis for the commercial and "high art" theaters, its work, nonetheless, examines and conveys the loftiest and most urgent needs and ideals of humankind, while coincidentally retooling and revivifying the actual techniques and approaches of theater art.

The fact that many of the LAPD artists have not attended the Academy — and never will — is not irrelevant, but is, in fact, the point. An artist is like an astronaut, sending back records of what he has found, and art allows us to then bring into our living rooms a representation of that artist's encounters with the forces and situations that we are unable or unwilling to encounter and interpret ourselves. If this description of the role of art is accurate, then community-based art and high art have in common all that is most important to either separately, and LAPD's Skid Row artists — living close to the bone as they do — are sending back messages as vital as any. The only difference is in the mode of presentation.

Sadly, it sometimes happens that an audience member hasn't the aesthetic room to contain both high art and community-based art. If that audience member is in a position to provide or take away much-needed funding, all the artist can do — all an artist can ever do — is hold fast to his own integrity. – F.L.]

Ensemble's founding

I was researching a solo performance art piece to perform in what is now Battery Park City in New York. They filled in the Hudson River and made a high-rent district, and so I did something there with a visual artist and an architect. It was at the time the world's most expensive piece of real estate. Then, I was in L.A. during the Olympics and started volunteering with some activists and so got grounded in the neighborhood, and was able to write something. I did the show in N.Y., then came back to L.A. and they [L.A.'s homeless] were making a tent city across from City Hall in protest over issues in the welfare system regarding what hotels the welfare system sent them to, which were unlivable. Also, welfare in L.A. was tied up with working, so that if you lost a job for some reason, you lost your welfare.

I was offered a job as a welfare advocate. I was hired by the Legal Aid Society of Los Angeles. Inner City Law was a free law organization on Skid Row that came out of the Catholic Worker, and we'd written a grant for workshops to the California Arts Council, Artists in Community and Artists in Schools. They required matching funds from the host organization, and I was going to make a piece about neighborhood issues. I started doing the workshops, and during that year we chose that name ["Los Angeles Poverty Department"] and it was a year before anything came out of it.

His personal mission

I didn't set out to found a theater that was going to run for 15 years, I was just following my research, and I found something that was important in the sense that it was fulfilling. It was an important place to be.

It's absolutely fulfilling. As an artist I wanted to find a place where my little footprint could actually make some impact, and that's an ongoing question.

The ensemble's objectives

We did a show that was a string of monologues about things that people did that made them feel good about themselves, for example, someone washing clothes by the river, which was a memory from childhood of a peaceful time, but that gesture then turned into his father beating his mother. We also did a few things in conjunction with the protests, and also talent shows on the street, with small sums of money as giveaways to the winners, just as a way to activate the neighborhood.

The original goals were to create community on Skid Row, and get the voice of Skid Row out to the rest of Los Angeles and beyond.

Sunshine, one of the original members, used to say that your best friend will be the one who steals your shoes while you sleep. The idea was to create a "safe space." And theatrical activity is a social thing, and there are all sorts of negotiations in order to have a theater company that works. It's a group activity, people have to work together.

To get people to work together and distribute the interests was a feat.

We started working collaboratively to get around authorship issues, also the population couldn't read well, necessarily. The first show like that was a fantasy of a guy who was creative and schizophrenic. The dangerous energy of it was reflective of where we were – the chaotic energy of Skid Row.

There were no SROs [single-room-occupancy hotels for the homeless] back then, they were all owned by private slum lords, and there really weren't any other art programs. Today there are over 50 hotels downtown that help Skid Row.

Relationship to funders

The company is on hiatus. It depends on funding and on other activities of mine. It's become increasingly impossible to keep going year-round. Now we don't have the money to do it.

Our largest budget was over $100,000, up until 1996 or so.

Funding dried up. The mandates got confusing. I kept trying to share opportunities to go as far as we could, to let people take themselves as far as they were able. People who started with the company who went on to be workshop leaders and directors of projects and to lead their own projects. One funder questioned this. There hadn't been this whole embrace of what is now called "community-based art."

The question of "were the community people in leadership positions" made a major funder question. Some of the people did very well, and other people it was giving them an opportunity to try something and to find out what the potential was.

It was a pretty extreme approach. I would cast [roles in the plays] to see who can grow [as opposed to who is stereotypically suited to the part], and to offer opportunities if people wanted to expand. There are so many examples in 20th century art of breaking down the barriers between the professional and amateur. Everyone supports community-based art but it's [also] a code word for bad art. I felt like we were always fighting that. In many cases, we confounded those expectations by producing something that was undeniably good art. In that early show ["No Stone For Studs Schwartz"] there was a fictional narrative, but the scary energy of the neighborhood and the main character was so visceral and true.

Starting a grassroots ensemble

You're compelled to become an organization because of the availability of funds. You're limited by not being a nonprofit organization.

You have to be respectful of and take advantage of the resources that are there. I started [by] volunteering for activists and lawyers who were active in the community. I had to learn to be in that community, how to behave, and also learn the lay of the land. I kept redefining what was most important to me. Initially it was about helping out people who are already there.

You have to keep your ear to the ground and be responsive to what's there. I think a lot of the decisions are practical responses to what's in front of your face, trying to find the form for what's there. Later on, I felt like welfare issues weren't the most important issues, and so we started doing a lot of workshops with drug programs, where people were attempting to transform their lives. We did that for years, we never really had a source of income from that, we just thought it was an important place to be, also it was a way of inviting people to be involved.

On one level, the strategy is to make art, and your strengths are your limitations and your limitations are your strengths. My being wedded to this totally ridiculous notion of there being no distinctions – It had an impact in the community, it contributed to what people needed on Skid Row and the people who were looking at that saw that. It contributed to thinking about what was needed in that neighborhood. But it also got out to the world in a lot of different ways. The most important art event of the 20th century was Duchamp's urinal, which was rejected from the show he submitted it to, and it was seen by what, two people? But millions of people know about that, in the same way that many more people know about LAPD than ever saw it, and it will continue to have an impact.

Learning from what's in place is the most important thing and going from that.

Here are three watchwords: Sincere, Respectful and Inspiring.

Ferdinand Lewis is a founding member of The Ghost Road Company, an educator, writer and theater artist. He is currently at work on two books: "Ensemble Theater: An Anthology" and "Ensemble Theater: Traditions, Approaches, Strategies." He lives in Los Angeles.

PERFORMING COMMUNITIES
Carpetbag | Cornerstone | Dell'Arte | Jump-Start
LAPD | Pregones | Roadside | WagonBurner
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