Stagings Are Rare in Orange County but Future May Be Brighter

“Performance art has always challenged the status quo of the art world--and the world in general--and there’s not much of an appetite for those kinds of challenges in Orange County,” says Richard Turner, an art professor at Chapman College in Orange.

The Newport Harbor Art Museum has offered an average of only one performance art event a year since 1983, an official there said. The Orange County Center for Contemporary Art has shown none for three years, according to one of its administrators.

Several members of the local arts community echo Turner’s observation that this dearth is a result of the county’s conservative nature. Audiences here “are more inclined to go to a more mainstream event than to something edgy and raw like performance art,” says Jerry Anderson, chairman of the UC Irvine studio art department.

Officials at some local institutions don’t necessarily disagree with that. But they point to another, more tangible reason for their lack of performance programs: Their facilities lack the proper theaters or auditoriums.

Ellen Brightman, Newport Harbor’s director of education, says the museum has adapted a multipurpose room--which has no stage. But, she added, the conversion, which involves rental of lighting and sound equipment, is expensive.

The lack of space has driven at least one performance artist from the area. Leslie Masuda says that she had to move from Irvine to Los Angeles (where it’s possible to see several performance art events in one week) as a matter of artistic survival. In Orange County, Masuda staged mostly unsponsored, site-specific works “in the street, at a bank or a railroad.”

Brightman is optimistic, though, that the Newport Harbor’s new building, planned for 1993, will include a 250-seat auditorium where performance could be offered. Preliminary designs call for such a space, according to museum spokeswoman Maxine Gaiber. Programming more performance art “is a direction we’ve been moving toward, and a building with an auditorium would afford us that opportunity,” Gaiber said.

Other institutions planning new venues over the next several years also offer signs of hope, tenuous and far off though some may be.

Orange County Performing Arts Center officials have talked about opening a small multipurpose theater between 1995 and 1998. Center Chairman Henry T. Segerstrom recently said, “I’m not so sure I understand what performance art is.” However, he added, “I think that ultimately the Center will consider (offering) all art forms.”

The 750-seat Irvine Theatre, scheduled to open in October on the UC Irvine campus, may be too large for performance art, says Douglas C. Rankin, general manager of the Irvine Theatre Operating Co. But, though no dates have been announced, a smaller theater is being considered there as well, and Rankin says that might be just the thing. “I’d very much like to include performance art,” he said.

Naida Osline, artistic director of the Huntington Beach Art Center, is committed to presenting performance art. Osline said that the center, scheduled to open in spring, 1991, will include a 1,000-square-foot space for performance, and beyond that, she would like to stage outdoor events. Residencies are another possibility there.

“I think it would be really nice if artists from Orange County and surrounding communities had an opportunity to perform on an ongoing basis so that an audience for performance art could be developed here,” she said.

Tim Miller, co-founder of Highways, Santa Monica’s vital performance art and dance venue, says that several people attending events there have told him that they’ve driven up from Orange County.

“I think Orange County is ready” for a performance art space of its own, he said.