A History of the National Endowment for the Arts: Impact on Theater

 

A Supplement to the Regional Theater Series

[This installment of “A History of the National Endowment for the Arts,” the last section of Bauerlein and Grantham’s “National Endowment for the Arts: A History, 1965-2008” I’ll be posting, is from Part II of the NEA report, “The Impact of the NEA.”  It’s divided into six topics—"Dance,” “Literature,” “Media Arts,” “Museums and Visual Arts,” “Music and Opera,” and “Theater”—but I’ll only be posting the theater segment. 

[This section serves as a summary of the work of the Arts Endowment in theater and its effect on the field.  If you’ve just joined this thread, I suggest that after reading “Impact on Theater,” you go back and read the rest of the serialized report, starting with the Introduction and Chapter 1, posted on 5 November. Then continue with Chapters 2 through 10/Epilogue, posted on 8, 11, 14, 17. 20, and 30 November, and 3 and 13 December.]

“NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS: A HISTORY, 1965-2008”
edited by Mark Bauerlein with Ellen Grantham
(National Endowment for the Arts, 2009) 

p a r t  II 

The IMPACT of the NEA

Theater

bill o’brien
Theater Director

Introduction

In a speech to regional theater directors, whom she had assembled in 1935, Hallie Flanagan, theater producer, director, and playwright, insisted that theater in America “. . . must experiment with ideas, with the psychological relationship of men and women, with speech and rhythm forms, with dance and movement, with color and light or it must and should become a museum product.” The group was assembled to help launch Franklin Roosevelt’s Federal Theatre Project (FTP)—a division of the Works Progress Administration [WPA]. Flanagan recognized that the commercial concerns that had governed the field since the nation was established did not always support this type of exploration. To ensure artistic advances, and widespread access to them by the general public, federal support would be necessary. 

[Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945; 32nd President of the United States: 1933-45) took office in the midst of the Great Depression (1929-39). The WPA (1935-43) and its constituent programs like the FTP, among others, was intended to put Americans unemployed by the economic crisis, including artists of all disciplines, back to work. They were paid to do jobs in their professional fields for the public good.]

There had been no single national theater in the United States, such as those in Russia, England, France, and many other developed nations of the world. Apart from the brief, but influential tenure of the FTP (from 1935-39), the evolution of American theater progressed without the benefit of coordinated federal planning or consistent investment. Despite this lack of centralized support, talented artists and leaders began to emerge in the early and mid-twentieth century who were intent on creating a proud American theatrical tradition that would appropriately reflect the nation’s new position in the world. By the time they were through, a fledgling decentralized national theater movement had emerged, one that rivaled the ongoing dramatic achievements of any nation in the world.

Nonetheless, American theater still struggles with rising costs, audience loyalty, and rival entertainments. [See “A Crisis In America’s Theaters,” posted on Rick On Theater on 13 September 2023, and “The Regional Theater: Change or Die,” 3 October 2023.] Theater in America has been marked by a long struggle between art and commerce, and its evolution from popular entertainment forms such as vaudeville and melodrama have, at times, hampered its ability to be perceived as a serious art form. Still, in the twentieth century playwrights have marked one of our country’s most distinguished artistic traditions. Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, and Tennessee Williams, among others, have created classics destined to endure as part of our national legacy.

These playwrights’ success lies partly in the fact that by the midpoint of the century amateur and educational theater was flourishing in many locations in the United States. Professional theater centered in New York and Broadway, the undisputed capital of the industry. But elsewhere, an active and talented set of artists and leaders explored new ways to produce theater. Their results were inspirational and helped to set a course for a more expansive national theater movement than had ever been seen before. One of them was Margo Jones from Dallas, Texas, who established the first nonprofit professional theater company in America in 1947, entitled Theatre ’47 (the name changed each year). Jones based her institution on a vision of a “golden age of American theatre.” In her influential 1951 book, Theatre-in-the-Round, she described her dream of a future in which theater plays a part in everybody’s life, and in which “civilization is constantly being enriched.” [Theatre ’47 lasted until Jones’s death in 1955.] Other leaders emerged in communities spread out across the country to join in the effort:

• Nina Vance and the Alley Theatre in Houston [founded in 1947]

• Zelda Fichandler and the Arena Stage in Washington, DC [founded in 1950]

• Gordon Davidson and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles [opened in 1967]

• Jon Jory and Harlan Kleiman and the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut [founded in 1965]

• Richard Block and the Actors Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky [founded in 1964]

• William Ball and the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco [founded 1965]

• Joseph Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival in New York [conceived in 1954; now the Public Theater]

These and other pioneering thespians sought to plant the theater in the midst of American life, to make it as essential to ordinary citizens as any other entertainment they might enjoy. And they tried to base it in communities and to define it as much by artistic innovation as by market constraints. [See “Regional Theater: History,” 8 October 2023.]

In the 1950s, the Ford Foundation’s W. McNeil Lowry [director of arts and humanities programs (1957-64); vice president (1964-74)] conceived a new strategy to support the nascent nonprofit theater. The foundation began to award arts grants, national in distribution, as leveraged investments in the development of resident theaters across the country. Support was provided to, among others, an ambitious new theater in Minneapolis. The Guthrie Theater [founded in 1963], established by Sir Tyrone Guthrie, Peter Zeisler, and a group of energetic artists, opened its doors in a sparkling facility as a repertory ensemble company. Elsewhere, notably in Stratford, Connecticut, and Ashland, Oregon, new theater festivals were created [American Shakespeare Theatre (1955-89) and Oregon Shakespeare Festival (founded 1935), respectively]. Concurrently, in New York City, brilliant young playwrights gathered at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club [founded 1961] and other little-known spaces to produce exciting pieces “off-off-Broadway.” [See “Greenwich Village Theater in the 1960s,” 12 and 15 December 2011; also “Caffe Cino,” 11 and 14 September 2018.]

In the 1960s, the landscape of theater began to change as a confluence of societal forces—including improved public education, relative prosperity, increased leisure time, and advances by women and minorities in public life—sparked more consumer interest in the arts. These same influences helped bring the National Endowment for the Arts into being.

The NEA Enters The Scene

By 1965, the year the Arts Endowment was established, theater in America had become a vibrant and vital cultural tradition, though mainly in New York City and the handful of other communities fortunate enough to have a professional regional theater company. The movement was primed for growth and the potential of the Endowment’s influence was felt almost immediately in the theater world.

The first National Council on the Arts contained several noteworthy figures from the field, such as Helen Hayes, Charlton Heston, Gregory Peck, Sidney Poitier, and Richard Rodgers. In May of 1966, the council declared that one of its primary goals was to support “the development of a larger and more appreciative audience for the theatre.” Among its first actions was a decision to undertake studies of several pilot projects in the field of repertory theater. The council understood that many of the best theater companies already benefited from grants from a number of foundations, including the Ford Foundation, which continued to back regional theaters in the 1960s. While the council felt that their ability to win support elsewhere should not exclude these organizations from receiving federal awards, it also reasoned that it would be imperative to broaden Arts Endowment support in a way that would appropriately reflect the national reach and responsibility of the new agency. Hence, the council also set about encouraging “grants to professional groups to be formed with strong local and regional support,” and “grants, research, and liaison work with the idea of sending the best repertory companies on tour to play in university theaters.”

Another early action by the National Council on the Arts generated an experimental program entitled the Laboratory Theatre Project. Formed in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Education and state and local school boards, the program aimed to provide American cities with professional theater companies that would present outstanding performances at no charge to secondary school children during weekday afternoons and to adult audiences during weekend performances.

In 1966, the first two Laboratory Theatre Project grants were awarded to Trinity Square Repertory Company in [Providence,] Rhode Island and Repertory Theatre of New Orleans. Under the direction of Adrian Hall and John McQuiggan, Trinity Square used the award to produce Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan, and Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness! The Repertory Theatre of New Orleans, under the direction of Stuart Vaughn, received funds to present Brandon Thomas’s Charley’s Aunt, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, and Richard Sheridan’s The Rivals. Theater critics responded quickly to the productions. William Glover of Associated Press wrote, “The biggest theatrical angel this season isn’t on Broadway—but in Washington. He is Uncle Sam, backing a multipurpose test of drama in education. . . . Taking part, in a rare display of agency togetherness, are the National Endowment for the Arts, the United States Office of Education [1867-1972; succeeded by the United States Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services] and state and local boards of Education. . . . It is the first time that two Federal units have meshed efforts and cash in the cause of culture.”

Other grants awarded that year went to the New York Shakespeare Festival for its mobile theater units, to San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater for its training and educational programs, to the Experimental Playwrights’ Theater to produce outstanding new American plays, and to the National Repertory Theatre to support touring classical productions throughout the country.

[I haven’t been able to identify the Experimental Playwrights’ Theater, which was also mentioned in Chap. 2 (8 November 2023), but the National Repertory Theatre was founded in 1961 as a touring company by Michael Dewell (1931-94) and Frances Ann Hersey (1919-2001). It seems to have been based in New York City until 1967, when it moved to Washington, D.C., becoming the resident company at Ford’s Theatre. In 1970, NRT moved to Los Angeles as the National Repertory Theatre Foundation. From that point on, NRTF focused on developing, sponsoring, and consulting on projects like the Los Angeles Free Shakespeare Festival, The Company Theatre workshop, The Bilingual Foundation for the Arts, and the National Play Award.]

Almost from its inception the Arts Endowment relied on the peer-panel review system to identify the strongest applications and ensure informed decision-making in the agency. The significance of the panels in the early years is vividly illustrated by the roster of theater professionals who served on them. In 1972, for instance, the members included Harold Prince, Joseph Papp, Lloyd Richards, Zelda Fichandler, Peter Zeisler, Robert Brustein, Gordon Davidson, John Lahr, Jean-Claude van Itallie, Donald Seawell, and Earle Gister.

A Separate Program

In 1967, the Arts Endowment established theater as an independent program. Under the leadership of Ruth Mayleas, the agency’s first Theater director, the recommendations of the panels and decisions by the National Council on the Arts had a significant impact on the future of theater in America. [Musical theater came under the Opera/Music Theater Program, which was formed in 1979.] Through both the Theater Program and the Expansion Arts Program, support extended to a rapidly growing national network of theaters. The program’s commitment to new work was reflected in its support for new play festivals such as Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival of New American Plays, and for playwriting workshops including the Eugene O’Neill Memorial Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut. A Playwriting Fellowship category was offered in the Literature Program through the 1970s, until it was transferred to the Theater Program in 1980. Support for playwrights through institutions and fellowships was integral to the explosion of new theaters and new work throughout the decade.

The agency also worked on behind-the-scenes issues such as the payment of reasonable fees and salaries to artists. The Arts Endowment offered Challenge or Advancement Grants to help companies acquire new facilities, hire new management, and build institutional capacity. A professional theater training program was established as well as a program to help young directors through the transition from training to professional career. Earmarked support was also directed to presenting companies, touring projects, theater for youth, mimes, translators, and designers.

During its first year, the NEA Theater Program invited resident theaters to apply for matching grants of between $10,000 and $25,000 [$87,300 to $218,300 in 2023] to “be used for general artistic and organizational development, and to include any special programs or projects in line with this development.” The category targeted geographically diverse groups of performing arts organizations, and was intended to assist the growth and development of a decentralized American professional theater by helping to strengthen existing companies. By 1971, grants totaling $559,000 [$4.2 million today] were awarded to 26 theaters across the country. Recipients included:

• Front Street Theater, Memphis, Tennessee

• Cleveland Play House

• Dallas Theatre Center

• Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park

• Milwaukee Repertory Theater

• Seattle Repertory Theatre

• Olney Theatre, Maryland

The Arts Endowment continued to focus on strengthening the burgeoning, decentralized nonprofit professional theater movement. Support for services to the field, such as publications, management programs, artists services, and meetings administered by the Theatre Communications Group—a national service organization dedicated to strengthening, nurturing, and promoting nonprofit theater— ensured field-wide support to shore up administrative and organizational capacity for nonprofit theaters throughout the nation. The NEA awarded funding to new play producing groups in order to ensure a reinvigorated corpus of new works that could be made available to producing organizations and their audiences across the nation. Support also continued for the Theatre Development Fund and its visionary ticket subsidy programs. This program was dedicated to creating affordable admission for audience members from underserved and disadvantaged populations and helped to ensure broader public participation in the art form.

[The Theatre Communications Group is a nonprofit service organization established in 1961 and headquartered in New York City that promotes professional nonprofit theater in the U.S.  TCG also publishes American Theatre, a monthly magazine, and ARTSEARCH, a theatrical employment bulletin, as well as paperback editions of play texts.

[The Theatre Development Fund is a nonprofit performing arts service organization in New York City created in 1968.  In addition to the ticket subsidy program, TDF operates the popular TKTS Discount Booths in Times Square, Lincoln Center, and Downtown Brooklyn which offer tickets to Broadway and Off-Broadway musicals and plays, and dance and music productions at discounts.  (There was a TKTS Booth in the World Trade Center that was lost on 9/11.  A dance and music booth operated in Bryant Park until 2019, but it wasn’t a TDF facility.)  Other services include the TDF Accessibility Program, known as TAP, for disabled, hearing-impaired, and autistic theatergoers, and educational programs for schools and student artists and audiences.]

In 1973, the Theater Program initiated a pilot project for Regional Theater Touring. While agency support of the regional theater movement had already expanded the geographic reach of live theater in numerous metropolitan areas across the nation, this program would work to create opportunities for participation in areas that were more geographically isolated. The touring program awarded five grants totaling $209,243 [$1.4 million] to recipients including Center Stage of Baltimore for its production of Robert Sherwood’s The Petrified Forest and The Guthrie Theater for its production of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men.

New Growth—New Challenges

In 1976, 45 nonprofit professional theater companies received grants from the Arts Endowment. One-third of the main stage productions mounted that season were new plays (124 out of 378). The proportion is an indication of how the Arts Endowment influenced the field in its first decade. In 1966, nearly all new plays that reached a wide audience originated on the commercial stage and then filtered down to other, non-commercial levels of the theater. Ten years later, the situation had nearly reversed, with most new work being generated by nonprofit theater institutions. Perhaps the most compelling transformation was how the movement had succeeded in becoming effectively decentralized. That year, Peter Donnelly, managing director of the Seattle Repertory Theatre, wrote, “What has been accomplished in the last decade with the assistance of the Endowment has been quite phenomenal. A theatre which for all practical purposes did not exist except in New York has been created nationally.”

Many institutions from many regions received agency support under the Professional Theater Companies category, including Actors Theatre of Louisville, the Alley Theatre in Houston, the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, the Circle in the Square in New York, the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, The Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa [California], and the Studio Arena Theatre in Buffalo. Additional funding was also made available in other categories, such as Professional Theater Companies with Short Seasons; Theater for Youth; and Developmental Theater, New Plays, New Playwrights, New Forms.

After roughly one decade of agency support, it appeared as though Margo Jones’s dream of an American civilization being enriched by theater—in every region of the nation—was beginning to come true.

The institutional growth was encouraging, but it also introduced new perils for the art form that it supported. Growing dependence on larger box office receipts, subscriptions, and other sources of income—coupled with the demands and expenses incurred from larger venues and their necessary support staff—threatened to eat away at the adventurous spirit that had launched the movement in the first place. The pressure to install cautious programming that would not put an institution at risk was always present. Arthur Ballet, Theater Program director [1978-81], recognized this concern and how the agency could respond to it when he wrote in the Arts Endowment’s 1979 Annual Report:

“The Endowment’s Theater Program stands at a crossroads. On one hand, the Program can choose safety, staying just behind the field, behind inflation, behind the sure warhorses of production and plays. Or the Program can begin to shift priorities, to try new ideas, new directions. We are taking the latter path.”

This latter path resulted in establishing new funding programs designed to encourage and support young artists with fresh concepts and new ideas:

• Director Fellowships to assist the career development of directors who have demonstrated an ability and commitment to work in professional theater 

• Artistic Advancement/Ongoing Ensembles to help existing theater companies create or strengthen relationships with their resident artists

• Professional Theater Presenters to reach underserved audiences by supporting performances by nonprofit professional touring companies in places where such work is not usually available to audiences

• Designer Fellowships to provide individual stage designers of exceptional talent, who work in the American nonprofit professional theaters, with financial support and creative opportunities

[Arthur Ballet (1924-2012) was an academic, dramaturg, and director.  He taught at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis from 1959 to 1985 and, as a Fulbright professor, taught in Denmark.  Ballet served as dramaturg at the Guthrie Theater, the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, and the National Playwrights Conference at the O'Neill Theatre Center in Waterford, Connecticut. He was a founding member of Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and an occasional theater and film reviewer.  Ballet was the editor of 13 volumes of the new-plays anthology Playwrights for Tomorrow.]

The structure of the Theater Program continued to evolve. By 1984, the Arts Endowment was providing funding via ten separate theater categories, including those focused on touring, training, direction, playwriting, translation, and other special projects, but by 1986 these had been consolidated into four major core categories: Support to Individuals, National Resources, Professional Theater Companies, and Artistic Advancement.

During this time, various economic and cultural shifts and pressures in the country fed a burgeoning solo performance scene whose artists reflected a wide variety of tastes and influences. These artists had minimal production costs and demands, and were able to create unconventional, highly individualistic pieces that could be performed practically anywhere. The flexible nature of this new arena provided a platform for a wide variety of artists to present—or confront—an audience with all manner of ideas, performance styles, and individual perspectives. The influence that these artists carried with them was as broad as any that had been exhibited from the American stage and included not only classical and modern theater, but popular dance and downtown art scenes as well.

[O’Brien’s description above is clearly a reference to performance artists like those named below, but it also applies to monologists like Spalding Gray (1941-2004) and Garrison Keillor (b. 1942), and new vaudevillians like Bill Irwin (b. 1950) and David Shiner (b. 1953). 

[It also describes the solo character work of Whoopi Goldberg (b. 1955) in her early career, Danitra Vance (1954-94) before Saturday Night Live, and Lily Tomlin (b. 1939) after Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In.  There are performance reports on Vance (“Short Takes: Some Unique Performances”) on 28 July 2018 and Irwin and Shiner together (Old Hats) on 22 March 2013.]

In May of 1990, Chairman John Frohnmayer, acting on recommendation of the National Council on the Arts, rejected grants to performance artists Karen Finley, Tim Miller, John Fleck, and Holly Hughes (who collectively became known as The NEA Four [see Chap. 6 (20 November 2023) and elsewhere in the report; also my ROT post on “Performance Art,” 7 and 10 November 2013]. The four artists sued the agency for the amounts of the grants resulting in a public controversy that led to pressure from Congress to eventually discontinue NEA support for individual artists and to make drastic cuts in its budget and staffing. As the NEA’s grant process shifted away from discipline-based applications toward four new agency-wide categories—Creation and Presentation, Education and Access, Heritage and Preservation, Planning and Stabilization—the agency was pressed to demonstrate more directly the public benefits of its grants. The Theater Program turned directly toward its service organizations to sustain the infrastructure of the field, with the Theatre Communications Group (TCG) being the most prominent. Since then, the NEA has collaborated with TCG in a number of ways. For instance, the NEA/TCG Theater Residency Program for Playwrights was created in 1996 at the initiation of Chairman Jane Alexander [Chap. 7 (30 November 2023)] and Theater Director Gigi Bolt [1995-2006], and support for early-career directors and designers was reshaped into the NEA/TCG Career Development Programs for Directors and Designers.

Shakespeare On Military Bases

In 2004, in an effort to make good on its commitment to bring the arts to all Americans, the Arts Endowment created the first program in its history dedicated to reaching military personnel and their families. As part of the agency’s Shakespeare in American Communities program [see Chap. 10 (13 December 2023)], professional Shakespeare productions were presented at bases in 14 states. Supported by $1 million [$1.5 million] from the Department of Defense (DOD), the military tour was an unprecedented partnership at the time.

Through this initiative, Alabama Shakespeare Festival brought its production of Macbeth to 13 military installations, with additional bases visited by the Aquila Theatre Company, The Acting Company, and Artists Repertory Theatre. Performances were accompanied by educational workshops for base youth whenever possible. Most bases did not have a conventional theater, therefore performances were presented in movie theaters, auditoriums, and in one case, an airplane hangar shared with fighter jets.

Conclusion

From its inception, the Arts Endowment’s Theater Program focused on solidifying the artistic gains that had taken root in the field. The NEA was uniquely suited to enter into this struggling but potentially fertile environment, and to enable the best theater artists to pursue their best art and to broaden their exposure and impact.

The Arts Endowment is the largest funder of nonprofit theater in the United States, and can lay claim to playing a primary role in the expansion of nonprofit professional theater over the last 40 years. In 1965 there were a limited number of professional theater companies operating outside of New York. Since the Arts Endowment’s creation, American theater has grown exponentially. According to IRS records, by 1990, there were 991 nonprofit theaters throughout the country that reported annual budgets of $75,000 [$151,000] or more. Today [2008] there are more than 2,000.

[On 7 February 2023, TCG published its Theatre Facts for 2021.  It estimated that there were 1,852 professional nonprofit theaters operating in the U.S.  That was an increase of more than 30% from an estimated 1,422 nonprofits in 2020.] 

The quality of theater that has been produced through the Arts Endowment’s support is remarkable. Of the 35 Pulitzer Prizes awarded in drama since 1965, 30 have gone to works that originated in an NEA-supported nonprofit theater, including August: Osage County by Tracy Letts [Pulitzer in 2008], developed at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago; Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz [2003], developed by Florida’s New Theater and New Jersey’s McCarter Theatre; Suzan-Lori Parks’s Top Dog/Underdog [2002], developed at the Public Theater in New York; and Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife [2004], developed through workshops at Chicago’s About Face Theatre and California’s La Jolla Playhouse.

The economic and cultural impact that American theater now has on the nation is substantial. According to TCG’s “Theatre Facts 2005,” the 1,490 documented professional theaters in America during that year alone contributed $1.53 billion [$2.26 billion] to the U.S. economy in the form of payments for goods, services, and salaries (not including related induced spending for eating out, parking, babysitters, artists’ living expenses, and other goods and services). The positive impact that these activities have had on the cultural health of the nation is no less compelling, if harder to quantify.

These numbers indicate a strong level of interest and participation among the American public in live theater. The field continues to face new challenges, however, in ensuring its ongoing health and vitality. Production costs and ticket prices continue to rise. As we move into the twenty-first century, entertainment and cultural programming available to the public via cable and satellite programming as well as through the on-demand convenience of TiVo, Netflix, and pay-per-view, provide the public with a wealth of cheap and convenient choices for their limited time and dollars.

[This report was written before the rise of streaming services and computer conferencing sites such as Zoom (founded in 2012).  During the COVID shut-down, these increased in popularity as means of presenting and viewing both live and recorded performances and may remain part of the theater universe as theaters have returned to in-person performances.  See posts on ROT “Theater Online – A Preliminary Report” by Kirk Woodward and Rick (19 May 2020) and “The Diary of Anne Frank Online” (29 May 2020).]

The challenges facing the field of American theater today are substantial, but history has shown us that our greatest theatrical achievements of our past transpired in response to its greatest challenges. As Hallie Flanagan asserted in 1935 and Margo Jones and her many influential colleagues understood in the decades that followed, in order to thrive, the future of our American theater must be guided by deeply committed and authentic artistic ambitions. It must continue to engage our public in meaningful and transformative experiences that inform our understanding of ourselves and each other. Throughout its existence, the National Endowment for the Arts has sought out, celebrated, and supported the best of those efforts and has helped spur an enormous growth in the number of nonprofit theaters across the nation. Their combined civic impact, via the production of excellent plays, along with the delivery of arts education, outreach, and other civic-minded programs, has been one of the most encouraging cultural evolutions of our time.

[Bill O'Brien (b. 1967?) was the NEA Deputy Chairman for Grants and Awards, appointed by President Barack Obama (b. 1961; 44th President of the United States: 2009-17).  Until his appointment, O’Brien had served as the Arts Endowment’s Theater/Musical Theater Director since 2006.  Prior to joining the NEA, he was Managing and Producing Director of Los Angeles’s Deaf West Theater for seven years. He’s enjoyed a career as a theatrical director and a performer for stage, television, and film.

[This concludes my serialization of “National Endowment for the Arts: A History, 1965-2008” by Mark Bauerlein and Ellen Grantham.  If I’m successful at piecing together an outline of the NEA’s history from 2008, when Bauerlein and Grantham left off, to 2023. I’ll try to post it on 19 December, finishing out “A History of the National Endowment for the Arts.”]