Honoring the Inextinguishable James Levin

Last weekend, a group of artistic colleagues gathered together on the second floor at Cleveland Public Theatre to rededicate the James Levin Theatre, the original hallowed space which James Levin transformed from a former Irish dance hall into a Black Box theater that not only rescued the neighborhood, but lit a fire that changed our entire community.

And James Levin himself was there to tell us of his top 10 favorite moments at Cleveland Public Theatre, and also on hand were a wide variety of artistic collaborators and supporters, many of whom who stood up to testify how James Levin changed their lives.

My introduction to James Levin was almost identical to everyone else’s story. He saw potential and gave you a job. He came to see a one man performance art piece I was mounting at Baldwin-Wallace College in late 1987. After, he came backstage, and seeing something that probably intrigued him after his recent stint in New York City with Ellen Stewart’s La Mama ETC Experimental Theatre Company, he invited me down to 65th & Detroit to show me what he was doing with Cleveland Public Theatre.

For many years, that neighborhood had been a ghost town with the impressive but long vacant Capital Theatre across the street: boarded up retail, no restaurants, no bars except the rundown City Grill: “25¢ Chicken Dinner” a sign said, offering a hard boiled egg. I meekly pointed out that Cleveland’s actual Theatre District was quite a few blocks away in downtown Cleveland at East 14th, but James Levin assured me that this was the right location. He had already proven he could mount large scale artistic events like Shakespeare at the Zoo and attract public fascination for real Art. Now he was embarking on changing the city itself.

James Levin hired me like he hired everyone: he simply told me to do something, anything, and that he would help. He introduced me to Lazlo Gyorki, who was working on a performance art workshop, and we took that idea even further. He pointed me to Andrew Kaletta and Leslie Moynihan, both of whom continued doing lighting and stage work for decades after their formative training in the avant-garde at CPT. James Levin made sure I took inspiration from Linda Eisenstein’s New Playwrights Festival, which produced readings of every script that came across, rather than curating. Whenever we got stuck or needed something or got in trouble, James Levin was there. Need some seating or a stage built? He set what he called the Brew Crew to work building risers in exchange for a six pack and Levin’s free legal services to ex-offenders who needed work and legal assistance. By the next morning, a freshly built seating section was standing.

And when we really got stuck, like when we had undercover vice squad in attendance at our performances, or they threatened to shut us down, or we ran afoul of the expectations of polite society, James Levin with his background as a lawyer would step in, pull the permits, chat up the judges, negotiate with the police, and allow a space for the show to go on.

One of James’s top 10 favorite performances was Zygmunt Pio Trowski from Poland (video), performing in the parking lot adjacent to CPT, where the artist laid down copies of the Wall Street Journal, piled lumps of coal on each sheet, then doused them with gasoline, casually tossing matches, setting them ablaze. From almost any angle, it appeared that the theater building itself was on fire. The artist picked up another bucket and, standing in the midst of all these flames spun around and doused his own body, as if to self-immolate. But this bucket was just water, and those of us lucky to be there simply basked in the heat of a dozen burning fires, and the knowledge that Art was changing us and changing our neighborhood as we watched.

I have no idea how many performances and artists came through Cleveland Public Theatre since James Levin founded it in 1981, but I do know that in just the 13 years of our Cleveland Performance Art Festival, we presented over 1000 artists from 23 countries. But numbers don’t tell the story. James Levin has always had bigger ideas. Next he set about to create the Gordon Square Arts District, our region’s first, followed by others in Waterloo, Superior and elsewhere. The arts district around CPT eventually became professionalized with the help of others, including Joy Roller and Jeff Ramsey, and attracted local, regional, state and even national funding to eventually, finally reopen that abandoned Capital Theatre and light fires up and down Detroit Avenue with restaurants, bars, night spots, retail and housing that has resulted in one of the liveliest districts one could imagine. If you asked James he would say he was, “using arts as an economic engine to invigorate and renovate neighborhoods.” Those of us in his wake just followed the sparks.

But that’s not the end of James Levin’s impact on our region. In the early 2000s as I was starting up CoolCleveland, there was a community conversation about our region needing a signature arts event to compete with things like the Pittsburgh Three Rivers Arts Festival and the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, SC.

Undaunted, James Levin and I jumped on a plane and spent 24 hours exploring how Charleston mounted events in unexpected locations, and we came back convinced that we could do it even better in Cleveland. With James’s trademark vision, we set out to raise $1 million and put on the biggest arts festival this community has ever seen. It took about a year, knocking on the doors of every potential corporate CEO, foundation and rich person we could get an introduction to. We raised $850K and sparked the inaugural Ingenuity Festival of Art & Technology in 2005, unleashing over 250 Arts groups on the streets, alleys and mostly vacant properties along Euclid Avenue from Public Square to East Ninth, and up Fourth Street to Prospect Avenue, most of which was boarded up with plywood at that time. From CMA to NASA, opera in the alley to Robert Lockwood Jr with the mayor on the main stage, James Levin’s artistic vision was on display for an estimated 70,000+ to witness first hand.

And look at it now. East Fourth Street is an iconic outdoor pedestrian mall space thriving with restaurants, retail, housing and attractions. So that was the second time James Levin’s vision created an economic development powerhouse using Art as the driver. And Ingenuity itself has moved on to take over its own abandoned building at 45th and Hamilton becoming the Hamilton Collaborative, a permanent home for over 30 different arts groups and hosting annual festivals, benefits, educational programs and artistic workshops, just this year celebrating its 20th anniversary.

But James Levin wasn’t done. Once people saw how he could take Art and unleash it on a community to help transform it, he was invited over to Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. to light up the Cultural Gardens for One World Festival for a couple years running. Pop-up exhibitions, performances, vendors, and ped/bike friendly spaces opened that area up to an entirely new public, many of which had never experienced the magnificent Cultural Gardens up close.

The city of Lorain, Ohio, saw what James Levin was doing, and asked him to unleash his magic on their main boulevard, Broadway Avenue, and he created the Fire Fish Festival, which runs to this day, installing artists in unused spaces, and culminating each year with a massive parade and the burning of a huge papier-mâché fish in the Black River. The formula is simple: bring in artists, connect them with public space and underutilized but magnificent buildings, turn them loose, then run interference by pulling all the permits and doing the legwork to allow artists to realize their vision.

His community transformation continues to this day with his company Legal Works, which offers free legal services to help ex-offenders who have served their time get their records expunged for free. While the laws have changed recently to allow this, the high legal fees made it impossible for someone who has paid their debt to society to clear their record and move on — until James Levin came along and raised the money from foundations and contributions to cover those costs. He finds ways to continue changing lives, changing neighborhoods, changing our community.

So when I attend a performance at the newly re-dedicated James Levin Theatre in that old Irish dance hall on the 2nd floor, or even see it mentioned in CoolCleveland or online, I’m not just thinking about that one magical space that James Levin made possible. I think about an entire region that he has single-handedly helped transform for the better, using Art. I see all the little fires that he set ablaze. I personally owe him a debt of gratitude for all his hard work and creativity, and charm and stubbornness and legal savvy, and mainly, his massive heart. But so do you.

by Thomas Mulready