A Wolf Guards the Door

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Wolf, director of Sushi Performance & Visual Art, has been at the helm of San Diego’s edgiest alternative theater since 1996. Over the past 22 years, Sushi has presented more than a thousand artists of all stripes, including such notables as Whoopi Goldberg, Eric Bogosian and Karen Finley. Its focus—contemporary performance—blends every genre and often veers toward the outrageous.

“Contemporary performance is in between the cracks of what you know as theater and dance and visual art,” says Wolf. “It’s always investigating and manipulating idea and structure, aesthetics and content, and many times—most times—it is less representational than it is presentational.” In short, Sushi gets up close and personal.

“Because of the intimacy of our space,” she continues, “the exchange between performer and audience is much more direct and personal. We don’t want to hit people over the head, we just want to use art as a way to magnify and focus our attention on a topic.”

Sushi, supported by private and public funds, grants, admission fees and memberships, runs on a lean budget. “I really take great pains to program diversity in all its shapes—and that means sexual, disciplinary, ethnic and cultural diversity—so we don’t fall into an easy category. People become very attached to their own labels,” Wolf says, “and that’s what they want to give to, so we kind of fall between the cracks in that way. Corporate dollars are no longer philanthropic dollars; they’re being replaced by marketing dollars. It’s all about name recognition.

“And that’s why we’re going toward finding individuals and small businesses who feel 100 percent committed to the First Amendment and the right of many voices and aesthetics to exist. There needs to be a place kept safe for that. It’s challenging,” she says.

“It has not been an easy road for us to stay in existence,” she admits, mentioning such factors as economic recession, the influence of politicians like Jesse Helms and the National Endowment for the Arts’ legal battles. “And it has been with huge personal and artistic sacrifice.”

But Wolf plans to keep offering San Diego a steady diet of Sushi. “We might do better in a different city,” she says, “but the need wouldn’t be as great.”

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