John Fleck Still Finds Reasons to Believe

“I do push a lot of buttons. But it’s the side effect of being a channeler of our zeitgeist.” For five decades performance artist John Fleck has been pushing buttons. His early performances in bars and clubs in Los Angeles and New York are the stuff of legend. He regularly challenges the status quo as he did in 1990 when he was part of the NEA Four who battled conservative politicians on the subject of obscenity. Their case went all the way to the Supreme Court and they were victorious. He’s a provocateur whose shows have been performed across the country.

Just as theater has returned to performances, so has Fleck. His new show, it’s alive, It’s Alive just opened at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles. It is arguably Fleck’s most topical show as it covers everything from the pandemic to cancel culture and everything in-between. Fleck plays multiple characters and sings a diverse selection of songs.

When we spoke last week via Zoom (you can see the full interview here on our YouTube channel) Fleck, who turned 70 last year, still has a lot on his mind. Surprisingly having faith in these troubled times is amongst the reasons Fleck has to believe.

“This was to celebrate the resiliency of a theater and our spirit,” he said of the show’s creation. “You know, it’s alive. It’s alive. Then it started to get deeper. It’s alive. It’s alive! There was a virus going around it and the politics, I mean it’s a monster. So I just channeled all of this stuff and out it popped.”

Fleck revealed his goal in creating the show, which had a workshop production at the Odyssey Theater last year.

“I’m channeling not just the world, like all the fear. I’m channeling extreme right wing fear and I’m channeling the left wing fear and I create these characters. I pretty much created like an opera of sorts where I created this mythological COVID germ that I play who’s just all about love. They’re not here to kill us. They’re here to actually save humankind. It’s all packaged in a lovely cabaret. Sometimes it makes an audience go, ‘you’re going too far,’ but that’s what I love to do.”

Reading the rehearsal script for it’s alive, It’s Alive! makes it clear this is a very timely show. Fleck is aware of its topicality and also of its shelf life.

“This is a show in the moment. I have no plans to do this show again. It’s just too contemporary. It’s a living organism and it has to be done now. That was always the nature of my work when I started doing performance pieces. You know, I studied with Rachel Rosenthal and those folks and I was really into these happenings like, you create a show, you do it and then you move on. So I create a new show every year. But then I started realizing that’s too much work. So I started running shows and they were generic enough in terms of times the specificity that I could do them a year later, two years later; like my last show, Blacktop Highway. I could still do that. But this show is definitely a living entity and has to be done now. Or it’s like cheese. We have to eat it now or it’s going to get moldy.”

When asked if his audience is mostly filled with like-minded people, Fleck makes it clear that he is equal opportunity with his commentary.

“I like to kind of like tear both sides apart a little bit so we can take a look inside what motivates both. I address the whole like cancel culture thing. My family in Cleveland loves to call us the cancel culture. But you know how loud the right wing cancel culture is? We both got to see how we’re both involved in this. It’s a dialog. It’s a conversation. They’re calling me cancel culture and us cancel culture. And yet they’re canceling abortion, right? They can say, like in Florida, don’t say ‘gay.’ I think we all need to just take a good look at ourselves. Some shits and giggles kind of helps diffuse the tension, if you ask me.”

While continuing to question what we’ve become as a society, Fleck offers a surprising perspective.

“Everything seems to be black and white. You’re either a liberal or conservative or none or you’re pro-life or pro-choice or, or pro-gay, anti-gay. I don’t know just what happened. I don’t know. It’s hard to have faith sometimes when when I see what’s going on. But hey, I’d rather choose to have faith that that we can somehow get through this right now.”

He then elaborates on his definition of faith.

“God has kept this world spinning for a long time. Faith, you know, I always think is being in a 12-step program. There’s a lot of fear. But I think for me and for people I’ve talked to in my orbit, there’s a lot of faith. I want to have faith that this democracy can survive. I want to have faith that that the polarization can stop that. There’s a way to communicate humanely with one another. You hear the sea level is going to rise by a foot in 50 years. I mean, God, how do you have faith that the world is going to survive? I don’t know what what keeps us going. Why don’t we get up in the morning? I have faith that the day is going to be good.”

I reminded him of a 1983 performance at the One Way Bar in Los Angeles where Fleck, donning a cardboard cake costume, dropped that costume and revealed himself to be naked. He then sang, “There’s no penis, like show penis, like no penis I know.” When he thought back to those days and looked at where he is today he was pleased with the decisions he’s made in his life.

“I never imagined doing bigger shows. At the time I was just hoping they wouldn’t throw beer bottles at me. They were punk rockers. developed some really good survival skills and I kept studying. I feel I had a choice. Shall I come to New York? I really should become a more serious performance artist. There’s always this thing between New York and L.A. That New York was more serious. Who cares about theater in L.A. But you know what? Being here in L.A. was the best choice for me because I got the best of both worlds. I got to be a performance artist and I got to work in TV and some great roles.

“I always feel I’m not a religious person, but I always feel like I had a guardian angel, a higher power, whatever you want to call it, looking over me. Thank God I was receptive enough to follow that path. I feel that creature who I was back then and in the 80s, getting on top of that bar, might have been mighty proud of what we became.”

it’s alive, It’s Alive! runs through March 20th. For tickets and more information, please go here.

Main Photo by Cooper Bates/Courtesy Odyssey Theatre Ensemble