To the editors:
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I felt the usual sense of High-Art disorientation when I read your recent theater review [May 25] on the Los Angeles Poverty Department (LAPD), a performance group that apparently consists of some homeless people and a “performance artist- director” named John Malpede who drags them around the country like the freak tent from a particularly sleazy carnival. This group has taken up a 45-day residency at a homeless shelter to teach us all what it means to be politically correct and morally stupid.
The Randolph Street Gallery, a center of this kind of socioeconomic masturbation, always mentions in their announcements that they receive support from the Illinois Arts Council. How do they justify spending money on such liberal minstrel shows instead of doing something direct to help these people? If they are troubled, counsel them. If they are hungry feed them. If they are without a roof, house them. But please, please don’t parade their problems in front of an audience of parasitic dilettantes just to fulfill this week’s guilt quota.
