Free admission for all: With NEA help, Grand Performances makes it happen

Bring art to the people. That’s the credo of Grand Performances, which has staged free summer shows at California Plaza in downtown Los Angeles since 1987.

The organization has received a total of $576,125 in the form of 19 grants from the National Endowment for the Arts since 2000. Rather than use that money to commission new work, Grand Performances usually produces existing work — 35 to 50 performances of music, dance, theater, spoken word and more every year.

“First and foremost, the NEA’s value is that it has helped democratize access to the arts,” said Grand Performances Executive Director Michael Alexander, who has been with the organization since 1990. “And in our case it has helped us do programming that encourages Angelenos to look at our city in new ways.”

Past works have unearthed the rich history of L.A. neighborhoods, including San Pedro and Boyle Heights. The story of the latter was told through the examination of Phillips Music Co., which sold instruments and vinyl in genres including Latin jazz, classical, rock, Cuban mambo and Yiddish swing. It also served as a community gathering place from the 1930s to the 1980s.

Staged in August 2011, “A Night at the Phillips Music Company” featured more than half a dozen Eastside-connected performers and bands, including Little Willie G., Ollin, Ruben Guevara and the Eastside Luvers, members of Hiroshima, La Santa Cecilia and Ceci Bastida.

Last year Grand Performances hosted the Beirut-based indie-rock band Mashrou’ Leila, which is fronted by openly gay Muslim singer Hamed Sinno.

“As the sun sank over the courtyard at California Plaza on Friday, Sinno called for a moment of silence for the Orlando victims before launching into ‘Kalam,’ or ‘Talk,’ a pensive meditation on language, gender and nationalism,” read a Times account of that performance. “Stage lights danced off the water in the courtyard while a crowd of dancers swayed and bobbed. Zana Hundal and Jad Bitar, a pair of cousins and first-generation Lebanese immigrants living in Burbank, unfurled a Lebanese flag.”

Grand Performances has also used the arts to explore the impact of racial divides in Los Angeles and to examine the role that arts play in other countries. It has looked at the nature of racial uprisings that altered the texture of life in this metropolis.

“In many ways NEA dollars are being used to test ideas and to see how the arts can be used in a variety of ways beyond the pure beauty, solace and rejuvenation that any of us get,” Alexander said.

Grand Performances was experimenting in 2010 when it helped Los Angeles Opera stage its very first outdoor screening. More than 2,500 people descended on California Plaza to watch “Il Postino,” which had been recorded earlier that day at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. At the conclusion of the screening, famed tenor and “Il Postino” star Plácido Domingo made an appearance and received a standing ovation.

Crowds of that size aren’t rare for the summer series, which averages about that number for big concerts. Family presentations, poetry readings and modern dance generally draw closer to 400. Admission is free.

Government funding, including grants from the NEA, accounts for about 8% of the organization’s annual budget of about $1.8 million. In 2016 Grand Performances received a $30,000 NEA grant and managed to match the funds more than twice over, bringing the total money raised to $99,629.

The money funded four productions. About $28,000 went to artist fees, $12,000 toward marketing, $11,000 to equipment rental, more than $12,000 to production costs and about $35,000 for technical crews and production staff.

The performance space itself, which occupies a tucked-away slice of real estate between glass Bunker Hill skyscrapers, is free. In fact, the three corporate buildings at California Plaza cover half of the group’s operating budget. Grand Performances must cover the cost of janitorial and security services for its events.

That the organization has been so successful at matching NEA funds can be attributed to enormous cachet granted by the NEA seal of approval, Alexander said.

“Even seasoned donors look at who other donors are. When they see the NEA, they know that an organization must pass scrutiny in a highly competitive environment,” he said, adding that receiving NEA funds comes with a special weight of its own. “You know you’re making a recommendation for the use of public money, so you manage these projects with great care.”

“L.A. Without the NEA” is a daily series looking at a different community group, how its NEA funds were spent, what artistic or public good did or didn’t result and what the cultural landscape would look like if that program were to disappear. Look for past and future installments at latimes.com/LAwithouttheNEA.

jessica.gelt@latimes.com

@jessicagelt

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