Highways Performance Space Highways Performance Space is Southern California’s boldest center for new performance. In its twenty-first year, Highways continues to be an important alternative cultural center in Los Angeles that encourages fierce new artists from diverse communities to develop and present innovative works. Recently described by the Los Angeles Times "a hub of experimental theater, dance, solo drama and other multimedia performance," Highways promotes the development of contemporary socially involved artists and art forms. Our mission is implemented through four programs (the performance space, workshop/lab program and two galleries). Annually, we co-present approximately 250 performances by solo dramatic artists, small theater groups, dance companies and spoken word artists; we curate and exhibit approximately 12 contemporary visual art exhibits per year with work that explores the boundaries between performing and visual art forms; we commission and premiere new work by outstanding performing artists; organize special events, curate festivals, offer residency and educational programs that engage community members in the arts while providing access to professionally-directed instruction. Highways Performance Lab The Lab fosters a belief in the importance of studying with working artists who embody the experimental vanguards of their fields. Those teaching artists are encouraged to simultaneously deepen their practice as they expand it, reveal it, and share it with others. Through workshops, showings and discussions, the Lab cultivates new work, new leadership and dialogue between communities that overlap and converge at Highways. Highways Gallery & Gallery2 Funder History: Additional Festivals/Activities: In April 2010 Highways will present its 6th Annual Poetry Festival building upon the success of five previous festivals, beginning with a community-targeted workshop by festival artists and producers. A series of four performances at Highways, will embrace local and national poets, slam champions, editors, actors, authors, teachers and cultural workers from the queer, black, Asian, literary, Latino, and hip-hop communities. In March 2009, Highways presented Margins, Fringes and Borders, a commissioned multi-artist collaboration comprising 8 short pieces by San Francisco and Los Angeles LGBT artists that subsequently toured to Claremont and San Diego. This event was sponsored by the Irvine Foundation. In September 2009, Highways will stage our 5th Annual Latino New Works Festival, a festival that enables the region’s emerging Latino artists to reach their target audience. The festival is a weeklong celebration of the full spectrum of Latino performance and spoken word artists. Simultaneously, a visual art exhibit of local of a local Latino artist will be on display in Highways Gallery. We have presented hundreds of works including AIDS EVERLASTING Honoring World AIDS Day (Four evenings of performances honoring depictions of AIDS from the worlds of theatre, performance, dance, spoken word, and music); Readings from Explore and Express by Emerging Artists with Disabilities (Celebrating Disability Awareness Month) Ecce Lesbo-Ecce Homo (6 weeks of new performance from outstanding Gay, Lesbian and Transgendered artists); presented international artists including Nicaraguan Theatre Company El Teatro Justo Rufino Garay in partnership with the National Performance Network, Performing Americas, UCLA Live and Los Angeles International Latino Theatre Festival (FITLA) and offered free workshops by the company to local emerging Latino performance artists; co-produced Standing on the Edge” our first annual Youth Choreography Festival (choreographers and performers from LA High Schools); organized and presented nineteen Highways Birthday Celebrations, three days of performances by nearly hundreds ofperformance and visual artists and community organizers ; presented TEADAWORKS: Annual New Performance Development Lab and Festival, a festival showcasing new interdisciplinary performances by artists of color who fearlessly tackle personal, political, and global issues and boldly experiment with multiple art forms; presented Phidias Women, a series of performances written and performed by Latinas; presented our Annual Treasure in the House Asian Pacific American Performance and Visual Art Series, 4 weeks of new performance by local, regional and national artists; offered a series of free performance and writing workshops for emerging Latino/a artists as part of our 4X4 Performance Series for Emerging Artists; presented LIP (Lesbians in Power) Service Cabaret Series, Sunday evenings of new performance by Lesbians of Color. A History: During the first few years Highways was under the guidance of its founders. However, in 1992 Linda Frye Burnham relinquished her duties as Co-Director leaving Tim as the driving force behind the organization. Throughout the tumultuous 90's, Miller guided Highways through many organizational and structural hurdles and changes. All the while maintaining its commitment to the emerging socially conscious and forward-thinking arts community. In the early part of 2000, Miller announced his decision to step down as Artistic Director of Highways to focus on his social activism through his performance work. Danielle Brazell stepped up to take over as Artistic Director until December of 2003 when Leo Garcia came on board. Garcia continues to serve as Highways' Artistic Director.
Leo Garcia, an NEA award-winning playwright, actor, filmmaker, producer, teacher, and activist has served as Highways' Artistic Director since 2003. One of the most versatile theater artists in Southern California, Leo Garcia is a nationally respected playwright, actor, filmmaker, teacher, director and producer. His plays have won awards from The National Endowment for the Arts, Theatre Communications Group, New York Foundation for the Arts, Mark Taper Forum, South Coast Repertory, The National Hispanic Media Coalition, and MCA/Universal. Garcia's works have been presented by numerous nationally-established companies and presenters, including New York's Theater for the New City, The New York Shakespeare Public Festival, The Jewish Repertory Theatre, INTAR, The Los Angeles Theater Center, The South Coast Repertory Theatre, The Tiffany Theatre, and Santa Fe Stages, among many others. He worked for many years with his mentor, internationally acclaimed playwright and director, Maria Irene Fornes, as writer and actor and has been directed by her in her plays in New York, Los Angeles and Siena, Italy at the Dionysia World Festival. Fornes also directed Garcia's play, "Dogs," at West Coast Ensemble Theater in LA. Garcia has also been a fixture on the Los Angeles alternative performing arts scene for many years, one of a handful of artists who represent a fully developed, professional approach to multidisciplinary work. His show of solo works, "My Alien Abduction," was an LA Weekly Performance Pick of the Week. Between 1995 and 2002, he served as an artist, teacher, director and producer for numerous productions and classes at Highways ; Resident Playwright with the Mark Taper Forum's Latino Theatre Initiative; and Project Artistic Director and Playwright of the community-based San Diego Playwrights Project. As an actor, Garcia appeared in over 30 off-Broadway and regional theatre productions and guest starred in such episodic series as "Star Trek: The Next Generation," "Tour of Duty," and "Jake and the Fatman." He was also a regular on the daytime drama Santa Barbara. As a filmmaker, Garcia's film, "A Rainy Day," was distributed by Universal Television and was shown in festivals nationally and internationally. Garcia has been recognized by Out Magazine as one of the OUT 100 of 2005, a list of the year's most interesting, influential, and newsworthy LGBT people. He is the recipient of the Master of Fine Arts degree from the Asolo Conservatory.
2008 Princess Grace Award Theater Award Winner Patrick Kennelly’s direction, design, performance, and curation in the realms of theater, film, installation, and performance and visual art has been presented in Los Angeles at a variety of venues, including Highways Performance Space, MOCA, Track 16, CrazySpace, UCLA’s Freud Playhouse, and New Wight Gallery at the Broad Arts Center. His theatrical work has included original plays, large-scale performance installation, and image-based physical theater. He received his BFA in Film/Video at CalArts and an MFA in Theater Direction at UCLA. To email: admin@highwaysperformance.org
Jamie Benson, as a Los Angeles performer and producer, aims to challenge performance traditions and create accessibly original work through dance, instruction and choreography. Produced for venues such as On the Boards, Highways Performance Space, Studio A, Electric Lodge and for events like the Art's Edge Festival, Benson’s goal is to observe and explore humanity by pairing dance forms with unusual, and often humorous, everyday landscapes. Benson has also been featured on the television series Dance 360, LATC’s Ovation award winning Shag with a Twist, Taking Back Sunday's Make Damn Sure music video, Rei Aoo's Dance Planet, and McDonald's Mario Art Commercial. Benson is now a member of the Rudy Perez Performance Ensemble, which premiered the post-modern choreographer’s latest work Surrender Dorothy at the Luckman Fine Arts Complex in June and will do so again at the Pasadena Armory in October of 2009. Artists: Wish List:
Please contact Artistic Director Leo Garcia if you have any of these items available to donate to Highways. Support:
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photo by Sunny Bak
photo by JC Earle
