A Coda: An Epilogue of Sorts

I left P.S. 122 at the end of June 2004 with a box of my possessions and mementos. The box is still on a shelf. I don't have the heart to go through it.

Leaving P.S. 122 was a tough experience for me. It was not my idea; I had planned to be there at least until I had clocked 25 years. There was a deep divide—though not one openly talked about or articulated—between the Board of Directors and me regarding the mission of P.S. 122 versus its future stability.

I found myself in an untenable situation. The organization I had loved and built would be endangered if I put up a fight. I decided that for all involved it was best if I exited as gracefully as possible.

After leaving a place where one has worked for 21 years there is a certain amount of grieving that goes on. I could not imagine a better job in New York than running P.S. 122. My life had begun to change as well: I had a new family, a wife and a young son just a year old. Gazing into the eyes of my son, the world took on a new perspective. I took a few months to talk to people and reflect on my larger goals in the world of performance. How did I get here? What do I do now? What was it that I was doing at P.S. 122 that made it work for so many years?

There are a couple of points I want to make clear. One is that I did not create P.S. 122 alone; and two, that the way I worked (and that I believe made P.S. 122 work) was in service to an evolving community of artists.

P.S. 122 was a group effort involving a lot of people, most of them unsung—basically a whole neighborhood of artists and their friends.¹ I had the great honor to guide it through its early years. It was a grungy honor—keeping toilets unplugged, neighbors happy, sitting in unheated meetings on Saturday mornings talking about how long we should keep the coal boiler going. But the reward was having this intense involvement with a burgeoning artistic community of all shapes and sizes, ages, art forms, and agendas. It was my job to maximize the use of this space and to make it grow and reach beyond its East Village boundaries. I was to take care of its history and make sure it was relevant every day.

I was always aware that I was in a position of public trust. The community that surrounded the Space relied on it. I was there to make sure P.S. 122 offered the best environment to develop work and at the same time be a platform for artists to find their public.

I tried to guide the Space through its many highs and lows. There was the heady fast rise in the 1980s, then the shock of losing core funding in the culture wars. We were constantly changing staff because of our low pay and tight budget—this was particularly difficult during the dot-com boom when everyone was joining the gold rush. P.S. 122 felt the constant toll of AIDS on our master artists and our future artists. There is no page in the arts administrator's handbook that addresses how to deal with a national tragedy and the psychic toll it takes on one's staff and community. Through all of this, there was the continuing challenge of keeping the doors open and making room for the untested, emerging work.

Often that meant challenging the artistic status quo at P.S. 122. Toward the middle of my tenure, when P.S. 122 was a recognized venue for new performance, I had many conversations encouraging artists to move to other venues so I could let new artists in the door (most of the time I did not mention the latter part). Keeping P.S. 122 fluid was my intention—not getting attached to one set...