Taking the Freeway of the Mind : Highways Performance Space seeks route to imagination with artists living along Interstate 5

The people at Highways Performance Space want to put Interstate 5 on the map of the American imagination. They want I-5 to be synonymous with artistic exploration, much like Route 66 once was with wanderlust of a more conventional kind.

Highways, which opened in May in Santa Monica’s 18th Street Arts Complex, is presenting a series of three performance shows from artists along I-5. The first, “Border Brujo” by Guillermo Gomez-Pena of Tijuana, opened Thursday and concludes tonight. Gomez-Pena has presented his work in the United States, Mexico and Canada. Last week, the cross-cultural work was awarded a Bessie, the performance art equivalent of an Oscar.

The series’ second installment--Thursday through next Sunday--comes from Alice B. Theater, a gay and lesbian group in Seattle. Begun five years ago, Alice B. Theater has presented a wide range of drama, dance and performance works. The group will produce pieces for the Goodwill Arts Festival, a major international event scheduled in conjunction with the Goodwill Games athletic competition, next year in Seattle.

The third work will be the premiere of “Secrets of a Samurai Centerfielder” by Dan Kwong of Venice. “Samurai Centerfielder” looks at a boy of Japanese and Chinese ancestry who grows up in white Los Angeles while wishing that he could be like Willie Davis, the Dodgers’ black center fielder. An amalgam of dance, monologue, slides and music, the work will play Sept. 28 to Oct. 8 and again Oct. 14 and 15.

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The ethnic and life-style diversity of the series pleases Linda Frye Burnham, co-director of the performance space.

“One of the reasons we called this ‘Highways’ is that we liked the concept of a north-south axis represented by I-5,” she said. “Up until now, the art world has looked largely east, mostly to the Northeast. But we’re interested in work that reflects a locality. We’re very tapped into Mexico. It’s a very Latin American model for art to come out of communities instead of out of one regional center.”

Burnham foresees a network of performance spaces dotted on and around Interstate 5 that would share the expenses of traveling artists and vastly increase the number of fresh productions.

“Someone could start in San Diego and work their way up the coast,” she said.

Gomez-Pena’s “Border Brujo” is the most widely known work in the I-5 series. It is making its Los Angeles debut after performances in Mexico, Canada and U. S. cities, including New York and San Diego. Wednesday, it was awarded one of nine Bessies given in the creator category by the Dance Theater Workshop in New York. David R. White, workshop executive director, termed it an astonishing piece.

“It might literally be seen as a speaking in tongues,” he said. “It’s a performance poem in a way. The ability to move seamlessly from English to Spanish to some Indian dialects is quite something. It’s a piece on language and on ideas, which is unusual.”

Gomez-Pena, 33, received a master’s of fine arts from CalArts in Valencia in 1982. He said his bruho , or shaman, is a “psychological guide to border crossings of different sorts” who assumes 15 different characters during the piece.

“Right now there is a movement in performance art based very much in language,” he said. “As part of that movement, I’ve tried to simplify my work so it will be very portable. In this piece, all you have is a table. There is no artifice. Everything is on the table: the sound system, the wigs.

“The challenge is for me to portray the complexity of my cultural journey from Mexico to California, from Spanish to English, with no artifice.”

Four members of Alice B. Theater, the Seattle company, will do three short pieces that they have performed in Edmonton and Toronto in Canada and Buffalo, N. Y. All are humorous, said artistic director Rick Rankin.

In “Portrait of Iowa,” the players depict pigs, cows, rural highways and other corn belt images. In “T.S./Crossing,” Susan Finque is a woman who becomes a man. Rankin described “Attack of the Zombie Backup Singers,” which he wrote, as “a ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe’ filtered through a gay sensibility, in which killer aliens in beehive hairdos attack and eat the citizens of Clarkville, Ala.”

Rankin, 34, said Alice B. Theater has worked hard to overcome a perception that gay and lesbian productions are parochial in their vision. About a third of the group’s audience is non-gay, he said, and its wide range of productions has led to city and state funding.

“Alice B. is going to be producing the first national gay and lesbian theater festival as part of the Goodwill Games and the Goodwill Arts Festival in Seattle in July, 1990,” Rankin said. “We’ll be part of a festival that includes the Bolshoi from Moscow, the Kabuki Theater of Japan and all sorts of international groups. We’ll have gay and lesbian companies from Los Angeles, Anchorage, Toronto, New York and San Francisco.”

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Dan Kwong, the final artist in the I-5 series, said he first saw performance art 13 years ago and immediately wanted to develop a piece of his own. What followed was a long struggle for Kwong, 34, a graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, to discover his message. “Secrets of a Samurai Centerfielder” became the vehicle because its character is versed in martial arts and baseball, passions that Kwong took from Asian and American cultures.

“This piece is about growing up Asian-American in Los Angeles--the things that happen when your role models, your models of power, desirability and attractiveness, are nothing like you.”

Kwong is center fielder for the Little Tokyo Giants, a team in a league of Japanese-Americans. He has been a member for 18 years.

“In playing baseball or any competitive sport, you’re repeatedly in a position where you have to face every fear, every question or doubt about who you are,” he said. “The emphasis on winning really taps into your self-esteem.”

The piece has four monologues and two dance sections, said Kwong, who is trained in the martial arts of iaido, judo, tai chi ch’uan and aikido. In portions of the piece, the Samurai Centerfielder wields a sword instead of a baseball bat.

The I-5 series at Highways also includes an exhibition of visual works that can be viewed prior to performances.

The “I-5 Series,” Highways Performance Space, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica; performances start at 8:30 p.m.; dates vary. Tickets range from $8 to $10. For information, call (213) 453-1755.