Art

Bad breaks for Bad Girrls

by Ben Geman

BRAND: "We don't have a plan B."

Bad Girrls Studios, the Jamaica Plain alternative arts space that ran afoul of city licensing codes last year, is in trouble again.

This time, the problem isn't with police or city officials -- who found the group lacking proper building, fire, and alcohol licenses and permits after police broke up two concerts there last May. Instead, says Jessica Brand, executive director of the five-year-old group, the new lease offered by landlords Stavros Frantzis and Mordechai Levin allows only visual arts at Bad Girrls' roughly 2500-square-foot Green Street studios. The old lease expired in March, and with Brand refusing to sign the new offer, Bad Girrls is in limbo.

According to Brand, the new lease would effectively end the performance art, theater rehearsals, musical performances, and other activities that make Bad Girrls an eclectic and vibrant organization. "It's not the individual programs that make Bad Girrls what it is, it's the sense of home . . . and the intersection of these different types of artists and people who cross paths that make the experience," she says.

Brand, whose group has occupied the space for three years, alleges that in a March meeting to discuss a new lease with Frantzis and Levin, Frantzis said, "You are going to have to be a different organization if you want to stay in the space." Frantzis declined to comment about the lease negotiations, noting only, "This is a matter between the landlord and the tenant."

The latest trouble comes as Brand seems to have put the problems of last year behind her -- Bad Girrls now apparently works in harmony with city officials when getting the needed permits to stage events. "When we've told them what we've needed from them, they have been happy to comply, and we have not had a problem since [the May incidents]," says Patricia Malone, the city's head of consumer affairs and licensing.

Whether Frantzis, in turn, will be so accommodating remains to be seen. In a city where space for artists' studios is scarce, failure to negotiate a new lease would be very bad news for Bad Girrls. "We don't," admits Brand, "have a plan B."