It's one mo' time for Serious Fun!

NEW YORK CITY - The 1995 season of Serious Fun! will be the last to use that series title and will prepare the ground for a new approach to summer programming at Lincoln Center. Next year's summer showcase will be a new event to be called the Lincoln Center Festival.

This summer's Serious Fun! program, July 6-30, subtitled American Visionaries, presents six productions devised by early experimenters with mixed media who continue their juxtapositions of elements from the literary, visual, and performing arts. Four were commissioned by Lincoln Center.

In the past, Serious Fun!, which was inaugurated in 1986, frequently accented humorous and favored works by less-known or emerging artists. American Visionaries showcases those who have made the transition from the relative obscurity of the avant-garde to endorsement by mainstream audiences.

Two New York premieres open the festival. The first, Hamlet: A Monologue, is a theater piece for which Shakespeare's text provides the point of departure. Wolfgang Wiens developed the script in collaboration with Robert Wilson, who plays all the characters. The schedule continues with the second local premiere, I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, a two-act opera, a cooperative venture by composer John Adams, poet June Jordan, and director Peter Sellars. The production, described as a modern-day musical that addresses the issues shaping urban America, features choreography by Donald Byrd.

Dance dominates the remainder of the series, beginning with a revival of L'Allegro, Il Penseroso ed Il Moderato performed by Mark Morris Dance Group. The work, created in 1988 to Handel's oratorio setting of the John Milton text, was Morris's first undertaking when he was artistic director of the Theatre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels. The evening-length piece employs two dozen dancers, an orchestra, a chorus of forty, and an elaborate set. Trisha Brown also is making fresh tracks on an acknowledged musical masterpiece with her M.O., which will receive its American premiere at the festival. The work, the eminent formalist's first to a classical score, is choreographed to J.S. Bach's Musical Offering. "We completely revamped the production budget," Brown said, "so that the score can be played on period instruments." The choreographer will complete her program by dancing her solo If you couldn't see me, which has sets and costumes by Robert Rauschenberg.

Bill T. Jones, drummer-composer Max Roach, and novelist Toni Morrison will present the premiere of a collaborative work, and Martha Clarke rounds out the season with An Uncertain Hour, a continued development of Dammerung, which she made for Gary Chryst. The new piece, uses lieder by Robert Schumann, Hugo Wolf, and Alban Berg, and will be danced by Rob Besserer of White Oak Dance Project, and Netherlands Dance Theater 3.

The proven range and power of the artists in this final edition of Serious Fun! implies that the lineup may well serve as a launching pad for next summer's international fare.