John Fleck

John Fleck is rehearsing in a tiny Los Feliz theater, and he's utterly naked. Not naked like he was in the Reagan era, when he was leaping onto Silver Lake bars, dropping his drawers and belting out "There's No Penis Like Show Penis" to a roomful of rough-trade guys and spiky-haired punkettes. Or naked in the way that made Fleck and his fellow performance artists Karen Finley, Tim Miller and Holly Hughes (a.k.a. "The NEA 4") into Public Enemy No. 1 in the eyes of Jesse Helms and other wardens of public morality, sparking a 1990s culture-war skirmish involving the National Endowment for the Arts.

In "The Jackie Look," the last of eight monologues that make up her new book "The Reality Shows" (Feminist Press: 256 pp., $17.95 paper), Karen Finley offers a statement that suggests her point of view. "Life," she writes, "is more important than art / But life is meaningless without art. " Finley may be speaking in the voice of Jackie Kennedy, but she is also referring to herself. In the generation since she, along with fellow performance artists John Fleck, Tim Miller and Holly Hughes, were stripped of federal grant funding as members of the NEA Four, Finley has found herself represented in ways she never imagined, turned into a mirror for those on both sides of the free expression divide.

The orange gargoyles on the porch overhang of John Fleck's Echo Park cottage smirk as a visitor passes beneath their gaze. "Come in," booms an unseen voice resonant with operatic timbre, the sound emanating from the inner sanctum, through the portal of the heavy wooden door set artfully ajar. "I've been expecting you." Strewn in Garbo-like repose across a couch in a murky corner of the living room, the performance artist-actor vamps.

John Fleck is rehearsing in a tiny Los Feliz theater, and he's utterly naked. Not naked like he was in the Reagan era, when he was leaping onto Silver Lake bars, dropping his drawers and belting out "There's No Penis Like Show Penis" to a roomful of rough-trade guys and spiky-haired punkettes. Or naked in the way that made Fleck and his fellow performance artists Karen Finley, Tim Miller and Holly Hughes (a.k.a. "The NEA 4") into Public Enemy No. 1 in the eyes of Jesse Helms and other wardens of public morality, sparking a 1990s culture-war skirmish involving the National Endowment for the Arts.

In response to Mr. Fleck's comment that those of us who do not idolize the homosexual community (or praise his art) are in fear of it, let me inform him that although I do not like boiled beets, I am not beet-o-phobic. Further, although Fleck has been denied funding from the federal National Endowment for the Arts, let him not try to persuade us that he has been silenced; he has merely lost a patron, the unwitting taxpayer. Now he must earn his money the way the rest of us (artists)

"A Midsummer Night's Dream" ends with one of the funniest parodies of bad theater in all of literature. Bottom and his troupe of workmen/amateur actors have been rehearsing their play, depicting "the most cruel death" of the lovers Pyramus and Thisbe. In search of entertainment for his court, Duke Theseus (Brian Brophy) selects Bottom's play for one main reason: It is brief. Also, the alternative would be to watch "the battle with the Centaurs to be sung by an Athenian eunuch to the harp."

Regarding the quotes from critic-director Charles Marowitz in Breslauer's article, I am curious whether Marowitz actually saw "Blessed Are All the Little Fishes." My work deals with being human. Perhaps what has caused trouble for some is that I see sexuality, and its many variances, as part of this experience. I know the work I've done has reached a wide audience, because I discuss religious issues, masculine/feminine behavior, dysfunctional families, addiction, environmental issues, politics, etc. Marowitz is incorrect in his assumption that my performance is "circumscribed within gay experience."

Bitchy, swishy and quite often pathetic, John Fleck's character in "me III," the third incarnation of his one-man piece about a self-absorbed, over-the-hill actor, makes for a screamingly funny half-hour. But underneath the shouting and pouting, Fleck's preening loser invokes some raw issues that are far from his alone.

John Fleck brings to mind films of experimental brain surgery. A probe touches glistening scallops of gray matter and suddenly the patient rattles off long-forgotten experiences deeply deposited in the memory bank. At Sushi Thursday night, in the first of four performances of "A Snowball's Chance in Hell," running through May 16, Fleck certainly rattled off. He also prattled, blithered, blathered, sputtered and spat.

Me, me, me--that's all John Fleck ever thinks about. Or so he would have us believe in "me," an acutely funny dissection of a performer at the peak of his narcissism, at the Museum of Contemporary Art's Ahmanson Auditorium. It's tempting to speculate on exactly who inspired "me." Let's guess that it's based on Fleck's observations of the stars, as a Hollywood character actor, as well as his own brush with celebrity as one of the "NEA Four." Massive egos exist in many workplaces.

Dance National Ballet of Cuba, right, performs Alicia Alonso's acclaimed staging of the full-length classic "Giselle" on Saturday night and next Sunday afternoon in the Wiltern Theatre. Lorna Feijoo dances the title role at the evening performance, Alihaydee Carren~o at the matinee. Movies Mel Gibson stars in the thriller "Payback" as a tough antihero who gets double-crossed, left for dead--and now wants revenge.

* "Much Ado About Nothing"--Mark Bramhall and Jenna Cole, above, star in Sabin Epstein's engaging presentation at A Noise Within in Glendale through Nov. 22. * "Sylvia"--A.R. Gurney's hit comedy will be staged at the Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach through Nov. 29. * "Dirt"--Performance artist John Fleck explores the 20th-century obsession with gossip and innuendo Friday at the Getty Center.

Gotta get out, gonna get out, haveta get outta my . . . head. It's easy for us L.A.'ers to cocoon ourselves within our cars, within our homes, within our frantic desires for fame, fortune and material objects. Sometimes you've just got to break the "work to be free" rut you're in. Getting out of town can only help one appreciate coming back. As this article heads to the printing press, me and my best pal, Ryan, are heading to New Orleans in hopes of recharging our batteries.

Everyone was pleased to see that the wolf had arrived. Even though the thing resembled a cross between a stuffed teddy bear and a very old bathroom rug, this wolf would do quite nicely as one of the many oddball props for "The Mystery of Irma Vep," the comedy / horror whodunit by Charles Ludlam opening this weekend at West Hollywood's newly remodeled Tiffany Theaters on Sunset Boulevard.

Bitchy, swishy and quite often pathetic, John Fleck's character in "me III," the third incarnation of his one-man piece about a self-absorbed, over-the-hill actor, makes for a screamingly funny half-hour. But underneath the shouting and pouting, Fleck's preening loser invokes some raw issues that are far from his alone.

Local artist John Fleck misses the point in his complaint regarding NEA cutbacks on grants to artists producing "obscene" or "pornographic" material ("They Can't Shut Me Up," Aug. 27). Most taxpayers that I know don't want to stop Fleck and others from creating any type of art that they choose to. We just don't like being forced to pay for it. Any person wishing to can purchase a ticket to a performance or buy a painting and hang it on their wall. If an artist is unable to support himself by selling his work, then I suggest that he get a "day job" and stop looking to the government to bail him out. ALBERT FLYNN Los Angeles Many people work jobs they hate because they need to earn a living.

Los Angeles Theatre Center has ventured where the National Endowment for the Arts wouldn't go. LATC has commissioned new works from John Fleck and Tim Miller, two of the four solo performance artists whose applications for NEA fellowship grants were rejected in a controversial decision by NEA chairman John E. Frohnmayer in June.

Gotta get out, gonna get out, haveta get outta my . . . head. It's easy for us L.A.'ers to cocoon ourselves within our cars, within our homes, within our frantic desires for fame, fortune and material objects. Sometimes you've just got to break the "work to be free" rut you're in. Getting out of town can only help one appreciate coming back. As this article heads to the printing press, me and my best pal, Ryan, are heading to New Orleans in hopes of recharging our batteries.

J ohn Fleck, 44, is a Los Angeles-based performance artist and film and television actor who in 1990 earned national attention as one of four artists to have their grants, previously approved by National Endowment for the Arts peer panels, overturned by then-NEA Chairman John E. Frohnmayer. The artists, who became known as the "NEA Four"--Fleck, Tim Miller, Karen Finley and Holly Hughes--were told that the reason for the denial was that their work contained "obscene" subject matter.