Career Prep for the Arts, Part 3

 

[This is the third and final installment of the “Career Prep for the Arts” series on Rick On Theater.  Parts 1 and 2 were posted on Thursday. 2 April and Sunday, 5 April, respectively; I invite you to read them if you haven’t already. 

[Part 3 consists of two more articles from the teaching issues of American Theatre magazine.  The first one, from 2026, is about the changes in the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., since Donald Trump has assumed control—in particular, the effect his leadership has had on the educational and children’s programs at the Center and the consequences of those alterations,

[The second article, from 2025, is about the changes occurring in graduate academic programs across the country due to funding issues and shifts in the various administrations’ visions for post-graduate theater training and education.] 

“WHAT’S LEFT STANDING OF
KENNEDY CENTER EDUCATION AND TYA?”
by Daniella Ignacio 

[I’ve included the article below, posted on the American Theatre website on 9 February 2026, in my mini-series on “Career Prep for the Arts” because it reports on aspects of that topic even though it’s not part of either the 2025 “Teaching Issue” of the magazine or the 2026 “Learning Curves” issue.

[Under Roger L. Stevens (1910-98; theatrical producer, arts administrator, and real estate executive), the founding Chairman of both the National Endowment for the Arts (1965-69) and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (1961-88), the Center established a number of projects and offices concerned with the education of leaders in the arts, including theater and the performing arts, in the United States (see, for example, “Michael Kaiser: Man of the Arts” [21 December 2016]) and “A Master’s List” by Sofía Barrell in “Arts Administration, Article 6” (14 December 2020).]

The Center’s roles as an incubator of new work for young audiences, and as a generous host for the American College Theater Festival, will be hard to fill.

Among my community of D.C. artists, something that has always inspired me is our ability to place art and joy directly next to anger. That is life here. Our latest source of the fire: Come July 4, according to President Trump, the Kennedy Center will be closed for renovations for two years. In a gesture that coincides with America’s semiquincentennial, or 250th birthday, the president announced on Sunday, Feb. 1 via a TruthSocial post his plans to close the Center for about two years for unspecified construction (though it had an expansion and renovation as recently as 2019 [see “The Kennedy Center Expands” (5 December 2014) and “‘With Newly Expanded Campus, Kennedy Center Aims to Make Art an Experience for All’” by Jeffrey Brown (8 September 2019)]). This move comes after cancellations and internal discord since Trump’s takeover of the Center last year, including his rebranding of the building in his name.

[Donald Trump (b. 1946; 45th President of the United States: 2017-21; inaugurated as 47th President in 2025) was elected chair of the Kennedy Center’s board of trustees on 12 February 2026, after Trump had dismissed the appointed board members and replaced them with his own. In May 2026, the board changed its rules regarding eligibility to vote, eliminating the ex officio trustees and permitting only Trump appointees to vote.

[This led the way for a long list of changes (including some that were unintentional, like cancellations of scheduled performances and appearances. On 18 December, the voting trustees authorized the change of the Center’s name to The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. On 1 February 2026, Trump announced that the Center would close on 4 July for two years of renovations.]

If the board approves the closure, it will be a disaster not only for the National Symphony Orchestra, which offers an average of 150 concerts a year at the Center, and for a slate of theatre, dance, and music tours, but also for the Center’s day-to-day staff and programs that employ local and national artists, including Kennedy Center Theater for Young Audiences (TYA), which has developed and produced more than 120 unique productions since 1986. 

Kennedy Center TYA’s staff had already downsized, with all its full-time leaders departing in October 2025, including David Kilpatrick, who’s now at Folger Theatre [founded in 1992; not to be confused with the former Folger Theatre Group, formed in 1970, which eventually became Washington’s Shakespeare Theatre Company], Maribeth Weatherford, now at Signature Theatre [an Arlington, Virginia, company, founded in 1989, that is unrelated to New York City’s Signature Theatre Company, founded in 1991], and Michelle Kozlak. The remaining staff are part-timers. The Center’s education department relies on Department of Education funding for $7 or $8 million out of its $13 million budget, as well as philanthropic and education grants. With that largesse, they managed to reach two million educators, administrators, and students across the U.S., Puerto Rico, and 12 additional countries in one year alone, according to a 2023 annual report.

If the program was already on life support even before the latest announcement, now the question is, what will happen to TYA shows that were scheduled to be developed at the Center during the planned two-year closure? One former staff member who spoke to American Theatre on background confirmed that, based on their knowledge of the contracts, artists might be able to take their shows elsewhere. But where? KCTYA was one of the only TYA companies in the U.S.—and the only one in the D.C. area—that solely produced new works, from commission to premiere to tours to national licensing, and its loss creates “a big void,” said the former staffer, who wondered what other sizable new-work incubator space could possibly take KCTYA’s place.

Of this year’s programming, a Seattle Children’s Theatre co-commission of Keiko Green’s Young Dragon already withdrew its Center run to focus on its Seattle premiere [12-29 March 2026]. Fishing for Stars, a theatre for the very young production by a collective that includes Megan Alrutz, Claire Derriennic, S. Elliot, Renita James, and Xinyue Zhang, comes up as a 404 on the website; another former staffer confirmed that the show, originally announced for a March run, won’t be happening at Kennedy Center. The same goes for a previously scheduled repeat tour of Sesame Street the Musical, which played the Center in summer 2025, as well as Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock. According to an interviewee on background, no budget is currently allotted for next season in TYA, and next year’s season “doesn’t exist.” A former staffer guessed that the focus would have been on bringing in groups or pre-existing scripts, prior to the closure announcement. 

There is one more TYA show scheduled to go up before the July closure, which one former Center staffer called “one of the most creative scripts I have read in a long time”: the world premiere of The Sea Beyond the Ocean by playwright Doug Robinson, who was raised in northern Virginia and is now based between D.C. and New York. Set to run Feb. 28-March 15 [2026; it did], it follows a boy who searches for the missing ending to his favorite unfinished book. Featuring an all-Black cast, it is a Black fantasy in a register akin to Octavia Butler [1947-2006; African-American science fiction and speculative fiction writer] that “allows for the possibility of something different” and “invites people to imagine a better world,” said dramaturg Gabrielle Hoyt.

Robinson said he wanted to write a play for his father, who read books to him over the phone when he went on business trips. It’s “a play for kids who like to read, who find that reading is the safest place for them to be,” Robinson said. “Working through imagination is a way to build the end of the story you want to have. Imagination is the key to seeing a future that has never wanted you there, right? So it’s a play that says a child’s imagination can create a whole world where the characters come out, they tell stories, they learn, and they move forward. They’re not static. They’re not like, ‘We had an adventure, and now we’re going home.’ The world is changed by the imagination. That matters.”

Robinson first pitched Ocean when former staffer Sean-Maurice Lynch introduced him to the KCTYA team. Since being commissioned in late 2023, Ocean received two Kennedy Center workshops: one with Ashleigh King, and another with KenYatta Rogers, who directs the world premiere. Over the years, what has deepened and grown the most is Robinson’s understanding of what endings mean to a child. As Hoyt put it, “It’s become a really moving discussion of how to talk to kids about endings.”

One real-life ending: the exit of Kennedy Center TYA staff. When Michelle Kozlak departed, Robinson said, she called him personally; his play was what kept her there for as long as she could stay. Conversations about who would take over her work were had. “Not gonna lie, it was scary to have that transition,” said Robinson. “But I have never felt those fears come to reality. I have never, for one second, felt a lack of intentionality or support from Kennedy Center TYA.”  

For now, the company is in rehearsals, and the room has been an “intentionally and actively joyous” place, Robinson said. For the actors, staying focused on the art is important. Many were reluctant to speak for this article prior to opening out of fear that the administration would retaliate against the show. Said Robinson, “Simply put: the Kennedy Center commissioned me to write a play, and they’ve paid me all my money before the first rehearsal. I can pull the play and I’m not missing a dollar. It’s not about that. It’s about what we as a group want to do.” 

He recalled a conversation with the company on the first day in which they spoke about their feelings and why they were choosing to stay. “That was heartbreaking, hearing the individual inner life that people had to contend with,” Robinson said. “But they all still came to the conclusion that telling this story in what is historically known as Chocolate City, to kids, in a time where people think representation is only in service of some DEI language . . . How could we not?”

The joy they’re finding, Robinson said, is also in direct relationship to a kind of resilient protest. “Do we stand up for our home? Do we stand up for a place that I went to as a child wearing ill-fitting dress shoes with my mother?” Robinson said, recalling his first visits to the Kennedy Center. “If, and I hope this is not true, if the last new work produced by Kennedy Center TYA is The Sea Beyond the Ocean, I am grateful that the last group on that stage is a group of homegrown actors, homegrown designers, and homegrown storytellers. Because, the Kennedy Center is, yes, a symbol, but it’s also a local theatre.”

On the day that it was announced that Center would be closing for two years, Hoyt said, the staff spent the day making sure that the company was getting paid in a timely fashion. “They were responding to emails of mine within 5-10 minutes, about my direct deposit details, when they didn’t know if they had jobs anymore,” Hoyt said. “What they were doing was making sure that the contractors and artists in their building were being, like, financially, taken care of and safe. It was wild. I do not know if I would have had the fortitude to do that that day, but they did.”

“It really has become an all-hands-on-deck situation,” Robinson said. “Everyone is stepping up in ways that both I appreciate and also wish that they didn’t have to. It is a both-and situation, right? It is brilliance in the face of difficulty—not that difficulty has made the place weaker, if that makes sense. The building is the people. The storm can rage around them and they’re saying, how do we keep as many people safe as possible? How do we ensure that this is not a place of more chaos, but the eye of the storm? That this place can be calm and still, and we are going to make it through?” 

Hoyt agreed: “The D.C. arts community has lost a lot of funding. Institutions have closed. Institutions are going to keep closing. For me, I did not want to cause more loss, just because I would feel a certain way going into a certain building. Doug’s play is beautiful, and kids and families should get to see it if they feel that they can go there.”

Another KC program for young people had already left the building: Last Dec. 22, American College Theater Festival (ACTF) suspended its affiliation with the Kennedy Center after 58 years of partnership with the Kennedy Center. KCACTF was the oldest program at the Kennedy Center (indeed it predates the Center’s official opening, in 1971). In a Facebook post, ACTF shared that “our affiliation with the Kennedy Center is no longer viable . . . We want to assure you that this change does not mark an end—but a new chapter . . . ACTF will continue to serve as a ghostlight—a beacon of joy, a sanctuary for all, and a place where every artist feels seen, safe, welcomed, celebrated, and beloved.”

[For those who’re not of the theater and don’t know what a “ghost light” (or “ghostlight”) is, see “Ghosts, Curses, & Charms: Theater Superstitions – Part 1” (14 August 2020).]

According to Kelsey Mesa, who has managed the national program with Gregg Henry for nearly a decade, ACTF held an emergency meeting the day after the “Trump Kennedy Center” name change announcement at which the national board voted overwhelmingly to separate immediately because “there was no way to move forward.” They had already cut Kennedy Center-run intensives for 2025 and 2026, after being told to cut $1 million with four months to go in the Education department’s fiscal year, and the intensives were the only budgeted item left. 

[The Kennedy Center offered various training intensives for young artists, though recent reports indicate potential significant changes or closures to these programs for the 2025-2026 seasons. Historically, these intensives have provided specialized, high-caliber training across a number of artistic disciplines.

[Intensives are high-speed, immersive training programs designed to make significant progress in a short amount of time. Unlike a standard weekly class or a one-off workshop, an intensive typically involves all-day training over the course of several days or weeks.

[The instruction by established professionals is usually highly specialized to hone technical skills and artistry, offering networking and mentorship opportunities. Many intensives require students to live on-site to fully immerse themselves in the professional lifestyle.

[At the Kennedy Center, these programs acted as career-development tracks for young artists, moving them beyond basic classroom learning into the essence of their chosen field. They were geared toward pre-professional students or emerging artists looking for a "gateway" into professional companies.]

One silver lining: The KCACTF National Committee and its regional conferences have operated under a separate nonprofit organization, ACTF Management, Ltd., so ACTF can continue in a different form outside of the Kennedy Center. Its regional conferences, run entirely by volunteers who work at universities and have their own artistic careers, continue to thrive, with four for 2026 already under their belt. 

The national festival presents a steeper challenge. Finding a space isn’t the issue; the biggest costs are travel, accommodations, and continued learning opportunities, which were covered by the Kennedy Center. ACTF had already planned to hold the national festival in Minneapolis, with Twin Cities theatres like Children’s Theatre Company, the Guthrie, Mixed Blood, and the Playwrights Center offering space, keynote artists, hotel recommendations, and more. But their split from the Kennedy Center means that the ACTF nonprofit doesn’t have enough funds and so will not host a national festival this year. (The decision was made before the recent ICE takeover of Minneapolis.) Also at risk in the shuffle: an ACTF fellowship that allowed budding theatre journalists to attend the O’Neill Critics Institute.

[The National Critics Institute (frequently referred to as the O’Neill Critics Institute) is a two-week intensive workshop for arts writers and critics held at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterford, Connecticut. It’s designed as a “boot camp” in which mid-career professionals and emerging voices hone their skills through rigorous writing assignments, mentorship from veteran critics, and immersion in the O’Neill’s National Playwrights and Music Theater conferences. Through the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, top student critics from across the U.S. have been able till now to win a fully funded spot at the summer institute.]

In the future, said Mesa, we may see “a version of ACTF that omits the national festival but gives young people opportunities to bridge their careers.” It also may be possible to partner with other organizations to host the festival, but the price of putting it all together can run to half a million dollars, a big cost that is not always evident to potential hosts, Mesa explained.

Students are still showing up for local ACTF gatherings. In attending Region 1 [New England states] and 2 [Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania] this past January, Mesa said that one play that particularly touched her, during the National Playwriting Program’s 10-minute play event, was Plums by Sarah Galante, an MFA candidate at NYU. Mesa called it an “intense, grey-area, loving” conversation between two lesbian mothers whose 6-year-old daughter comes home with bruises on her arm, spurring questions about harm and protection. It was a quintessential ACTF moment: A Region 1 co-chair of the National Playwriting Program, Cassie Seinuk, had won the national 10-minute play award at KCACTF in 2015 with her play Occupy Hallmark, which was also Mesa’s first experience with KCACTF, in a reading she directed for the National Festival.

As ACTF still hopes to provide opportunities for community colleges, small arts colleges, and MFAs alike, they are actively accepting donations to stay afloat and sustain national opportunities. “This work is for students who do not come with privilege, and gives them the chance to be theatre artists,” Mesa said. “I want the field to step up for it.” 

Calls to action within the D.C. theatre community have been swift. In a statement, TheatreWashington executive director Amy Austin said the Center’s closure “will have widespread ramifications for the D.C.-area performing arts community and everyone who benefits from a culturally vibrant region.” The service organization urged folks to donate to its Taking Care Fund, which supports D.C. arts workers through tough times, and encouraged displaced arts workers to use the fund.

[From “The Story of Theatre Washington”: 

In the early 1980s, the Washington Theatre Awards Society was founded to recognize and encourage excellence in professional theatre in the Washington, DC region through the presentation of The Helen Hayes Awards,

. . . .

In 2011, with the encouragement of a wide range of stakeholders, a stronger and more robust organization evolved – theatreWashington (one word, lower case t, capital W). It was a call to evolve from an Awards presenter to a more layered organization to serve the community. Presently, working in tandem with the community, Theatre Washington (two words, capital T, capital W) is evolving into a full partnership organization in service to the community with multiple year-round, core programs.

[“Theatre Washington is an alliance of theatre organizations, theatre-makers, and theatre supporters that promotes and nurtures a creative, equitable, healthy, and diverse regional theatre community.”]

Last Tuesday, Kennedy Center Arts Workers United, representing Actors[’] Equity, SDC [Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, the union that represents theatrical directors and choreographers], IATSE [International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the union that represents stagehands, technicians, artisans, and craftspeople in TV, film, and stage], and more, spoke out. “A pause in Kennedy Center operations without due regard for those who work there would be harmful for the arts and creative workers in America,” the union said in a statement. “Should we receive formal notice of a temporary suspension of Kennedy Center operations that displaces our members, we will enforce our contracts and exercise all our rights under the law. We expect continued fair pay, enforceable worker protections, and accountability for our members in the event they cannot work due to an operational pause.”

Hoyt, who lived in D.C. for five years as literary manager for Round House Theatre [Bethesda, Maryland], reiterated the respect that she has “for every artist who was supposed to come through Kennedy Center this year, who did come through Kennedy Center this year, or who did not come through Kennedy Center this year. Saying no is an act of profound bravery, and it’s really necessary. That we made a different choice, I think, does not negate theirs, and does not imply that theirs was wrong, or invalid, or created harm of any kind. The theatre community has to have solidarity right now. We have such respect for a lot of amazing artists who are faced with terrible choices. There are no good choices. This is a bad situation.”

It’s also true, she noted, that the DMV area [a local appellation for the “District (of Columbia), Maryland, Virginia.”]  “is a great place to be a kid who loves theatre,” citing education programs and productions at Imagination Stage [Bethesda], Round House Theatre, Adventure Theatre MTC [DC], Theatre Lab [DC], Educational Theatre Company [Arlington], Shakespeare Theatre Company, Arena Stage, and many more. “It is hard for me to imagine that the Kennedy Center’s ability to serve young people is going to end this year,” Hoyt said. “I just, I don’t—that cannot be, under my personal cosmology.”

[Daniella Ignacio, a writer, theater artist, and musician based in Washington, D.C., is a contributing editor of American Theatre magazine.

[Ignacio’s report on the effects on the D.C. area of the changes being wrought at the Kennedy Center is very personal to me.  I was born in Washington and have often admitted to being something of a Washington chauvinist.  Even though I haven’t lived there since I went away for high school in 1961, my parents lived there almost their entire married lives (the exception being a five-year period when my dad was a Foreign Service Officer abroad). 

[I returned to D.C. frequently for the rest of their lives and, since they were theater-lovers, one of our frequent activities was going to the Kennedy Center, the National Theatre, Arena Stage, and many of the small houses that arose in the area after 1980.  I watched Washington grow from an almost theater desert in the ’50s and ’60s into a thriving and vibrant theater town.  (I wrote a little about this in “‘Stages in DC’ (Summer 1985)” [25 December 2011] and “Washington’s Arena Stage: Under Construction” [26 November 2011].)

[The Kennedy Center wasn’t even there until 1971 (I was out of the country in the army when it opened and didn’t get back to Washington until 1974), but the change it effected on the D.C. area’s theater was remarkable.  Within 10 years, our own little “Off-Broadway” burgeoned.  My parents and I were in hog-heaven.  To see it in jeopardy now because somebody’s sticking a monkey wrench into the works disheartens me—and makes me angry.]

*  *  *  *
“DEGREES IN THE SHADE?”
by KJ Sanchez

[This article appeared in American Theatre’s annual training issue, “Learning Curves” (Winter 2026 – volume 42, number 3); it was posted on the AT website on 16 February 2026.]

With some MFA theatre programs closing and others opening, an educator talks to colleagues about the state of the academy.

I never thought I would be a professor. And I never imagined I would live in Texas. I was born and raised in New Mexico, and—well, we New Mexicans had some opinions about the Texans who came to ski our mountains.

For 25 years I lived in New York. I ran American Records (my theatre company), wrote plays, and directed across the country. In 2015 I was invited to Austin to be a guest respondent for student productions at the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin). The works were part of the Cohen New Works Festival, a biannual week-long festival where audiences can see up to 40 productions, tucked into every nook and cranny of the Theatre and Dance building, featuring work created, curated, and produced by students. On my first visit to UT Austin, I moved from show to show, gob-smacked—how had I never known about this magical land where the students were on fire and the teachers seemed to truly like each other?

Playwriting professors Steven Dietz [b. 1958; playwright, theater director, and teacher] and Kirk Lynn took me for a cup of coffee and asked if I’d be interested in spending a semester in Austin as a guest instructor. That semester turned into a teaching gig—and now here I am a professor, and I lead the school’s MFA in Directing program.

Yesterday was a fairly typical day for me: My first class was at 9 a.m. It’s called Spectacle as a Political Tool. Two graduate directors and I teach 60 undergraduates (most in their first year) from colleges across the UT campus about how spectacle has historically informed self-governance. After that, I had meetings with grad students to talk about the classes they’ll take next semester: One will take a sound design class, another is excited about a choreography course offered by our dance program.

In the afternoon I joined the graduate designers in their studio class to discuss the art of iteration. That evening I sat in on techs: a three-person all-femme adaptation of Macbeth [27 October-2 November 2025] and an all-the-bells-and-whistles-we-can-muster staging of Cabaret [30 October-9 November 2025].

A long day. But a wonderful day. Because I am feeling extremely grateful to have this job. Even though I never thought I would be what Kirk Lynn calls an “indoor cat,” every day I understand more deeply what the academy can offer . . . and every day I worry about what might happen to any one of similar graduate programs across the country.

I don’t think I’m alone in that when I hear of another MFA program closing or pausing, I fear a trend. Social media postings give us anecdotal information about these closures, but I am cautious about generalizations without comprehensive data about how many programs have closed versus how many have been created within a certain time frame. Perhaps this “wait until complete data is in” approach is simply an attempt to remain stubbornly optimistic. (Quite likely.)

That said, I reached out recently to two educators in the midst of great change: Luis Alfaro [b. 1961; Chicano performance artist, writer, theater director, and social activist], associate professor of Dramatic Writing and director of the MFA in Dramatic Writing program at the University of Southern California (USC [Los Angeles]), and Seth Gordon, professor of Directing and Theatre Management at the University of Oklahoma (OU [Norman]). Maestro Alfaro posted recently that his beloved MFA program, which has been in existence for more than 30 years, will be “sunsetted” after this school year is done. Meanwhile, Gordon plans to reopen an MFA in Directing program at OU, which shuttered about 20 years ago.

The first takeaway I gleaned from conversations with both Alfaro and Gordon is that none of the three of us think graduate school is the only way to advance a playwriting or directing practice, nor do we think graduate school is for everyone. A perfect example is Alfaro himself, a MacArthur Fellow who is in a very special group of educators who have received tenure due to extraordinary commensurate experience. Not only did Alfaro never get an MFA himself—he never went to college.

“I went straight into the field in the ’80s,” he recalled. After studying with playwright María Irene Fornés [Cuban-born American; 1930-2018], Alfaro worked as a poet and performance artist. “The weird thing about being at USC,” Alfaro told me, “is I was raised in abject poverty in one of the poorest, most violent neighborhoods of L.A., which is where USC is.”

How did he get from there to here? “I’m a child of the apprenticeships, the internships, the fellowships, all of that,” he said. “I wrote a ton of letters to people, and said, ‘Hey, I love your work and I would love to meet you.’”

One of those meetings was with Mark Russell [b. 1955; experimental theater producer/curator/”programmer” (his word)], who ran New York City’s P.S. 122 (and would later run the Under the Radar Festival), and who steered Alfaro to such spaces as DiverseWorks in Houston, Hallwalls in Buffalo, New York, and Guadalupe Arts in San Antonio, Texas. “I went everywhere, right?” Alfaro recalled. “Instead of going to New York, I got to go around the country. And that circuit was full of amazing people.”

One of Alfaro’s favorite spaces was Boston’s The Theater Offensive, where artistic director Abe Rybeck [b. ca. 1956] would “pair me up on these double bills with these veteran artists that were extraordinary.”

As I listened to Alfaro describe his on-the-job training and apprenticeships, it dawned on me: The days of a broke emerging artist being able to afford to travel the country and learn from veteran artists are gone. The cost of living has made it essentially impossible. This is where some graduate programs are taking up the slack. Yes, graduate schools are cost-prohibitive for far too many, but where an artist like Alfaro once moved from city to city seeking mentorship, we now bring the elders and leaders of the field to our graduate programs to meet our students, to offer workshops, feedback, and mentorships. An additional benefit of this new model is that our guest mentors see the work of and also interact with our undergraduate student body. What once served one emerging artist at a time is now serving many.

Alfaro and his colleagues were told by USC leadership that the reason the MFA program was closing was due to a pivot to a “revenue-based model.” This news was particularly surprising, given that USC made their Acting and Dramatic Writing programs tuition-free starting in the 2024-25 school year. I asked Gordon about this: How would he respond if OU mandated that he create a program centered on revenue?

“We are a Research 1 University, as are you,” Gordon said. “So the fact that we will have the kind of impact on the field that I hope we’ll have is what we’re all about. I am assuming that if I am ever told we are switching to a revenue-based model, the subtext of that is, ‘We’re not an R1.’” The philosophy that guides both of our programs, as Gordon put it, is about “how we are going to contribute to our field: by providing it with the people that the field needs to lead it responsibly into its next chapter.”

Alfaro has trained many such leaders, with students going on to become the next generation of writers in live performance, TV, and film. He said he tailors each student’s program of study to best prepare them to lead in their own unique way. “I can see what each one means in the field,” he said. 

Because USC has been accepting two writers on average per year, Alfaro explained, “You can diagnose and build a program for them. ‘What do you need?’ What we’re doing is spending time to figure out how to find them the right mentors, to connect with the right people. Then every year, there’s one that’s sort of extraordinary, and you have to build something special for that one student. That’s what graduate school can do.”

That may sound shocking. In fact, one rationale Alfaro was given for the program’s end was that this model—of many instructors hired to serve a very small number of students’ needs—is financially untenable. The fuller picture, though, is that Alfaro and his colleagues teach and mentor all across campus.

“I teach undergraduate courses, I teach in acting, I teach in critical studies,” he said. “Right now, I’m teaching a Latinx course—packed—and I’m teaching the Playwriting 1 undergrad. So I’m teaching courses that are not in my MFA program, but that bring a lot of money into the program.”

Not only are we faculty teaching across degrees and areas of specialization, so are our graduate students, who teach many of the introductory courses that bring in large numbers of students. Another common part of our work as graduate faculty is to bring our research into STEM spaces. Here at UT Austin, I watch in awe as my colleague, associate professor Kathryn Dawson, area head of the Drama and Theatre for Youth and Communities program, has been leading a cohort of theatre and dance faculty and graduate students who have been collaborating with UT Austin STEM researchers on a multi-year grand challenge involving over 100 Principle Investigators (project leads) across 40 departments, as they study various aspects of climate change and resiliency.

I asked Seth Gordon why he decided to lead the charge in restarting a long-dormant graduate program. “I don’t think we really understood at the time the degree to which we were filling a void that appears to be developing,” he admitted. “We just figured there’s a need in this part of the country.”

Gordon received a grant to study graduate programs in his region—which is larger than you might think. “Oklahoma, the states that touch Oklahoma, and the states that touch the states that touch Oklahoma—that right there is about 10 or 15 states,” he said. Even within that larger region, Gordon found only two comparable theatre directing MFA programs: UT Austin, where I teach, and the University of Arkansas.

His ambitions aren’t just that OU’s MFA students work in the theatre field. “I’m hoping that this program will allow people to find themselves as leaders as much as directors,” Gordon said. “My hope is to expose them to the field of directing, but also to the field of nonprofit leadership.”

Part of Gordon’s mission with this new MFA program is to nurture new companies that form among student cohorts, having already seen some success along these lines with former undergraduates, who have formed a theatre company called Co.Arts Theater Co. (formerly Collective Arts Productions). That company has also welcomed current students into its ranks, so that they’re “forging that first level of connections.”

Another gap in the field that the academy has taken up: providing space and resources to work and bridges to cultivate relationships. When I moved to New York in the early ’90s, not only was I able [to] work in theatre for next to nothing because my rent (in Chelsea, no less!) was $250 per month, but I and my colleagues could work in grungy but cherished hole-in-the-wall venues like Todo con Nada on Ludlow Street, because those venues were affordable to self-produce in. Emerging artists today are often priced out of similar opportunities to build their oeuvre and hone their craft. They may instead get that chance in graduate school. As Alfaro notes, at a well-funded university, those resources can be extraordinary.

“Last year, I had all the second-year stage managers, mostly women and people of color,” said Alfaro. In a single year they got to work on “a big, fat musical, and then Angels in America [1991; Tony Kushner; 18-27 April 2025], and Marat/Sade [The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade; 1963; Peter Weiss (German); 18-27 October 2024], and a site-specific space. Where are they going to get that training and that capacity, on that level, in the way that they’re doing on campus?”

[nb: USC staged only Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches in this season.]

Don’t get me wrong: Graduate programs are not perfect. I often reflect on the times I have not been the ideal mentor that a student deserved. And I am fully aware of how expensive graduate programs can be, even when tuition is waived and students get paid to teach or work as research assistants. With the cost of living, it’s still a massive investment.

But one thing I know to be true: Graduate programs are contributing to our field’s future in so many ways. Our biggest challenge at the moment is to make those contributions visible.

Though his MFA program will no longer be accepting new graduate students, Alfaro is not going anywhere. First he has his current graduate students to serve—and I’d lay down good money that these current students are going to get some of the best teaching of Alfaro’s career. He’s working every day, building new collaborations and devising new systems to keep serving all his students, now and into a new, if uncertain future.

What we all understand is that we have no theatre if we have no new plays. And Luis Alfaro—hands down one of our greatest living playwrights—has always been a mentor by nature. His dedication to passing the torch is true, and is sure to carry on in whatever form comes next.

“I feel like a drug dealer,” he quipped. “I’m gonna make you love writing a play. You won’t even realize we’re gonna write a whole play, but we’re writing a whole play.”

As Kimberly Belflower, a UT Austin playwriting MFA from 2017, put it, “What starts here changes the world.”

[KJ Sanchez is a director, playwright, and author of The Radical Act of Listening: Making Documentary and Investigative Theatre (Routledge, 2025).  She founded American Records and leads the MFA Directing program at the University of Texas, Austin.]

Degrading the Arts (Redux)

 

[On 13 August 2009, I posted “Degrading the Arts” on Rick On Theater, the first of several articles I would post on the Culture War on the arts and creative expression in the United States.  At that moment in history, it looked as if we were escaping any serious or lasting damage to the creative life of Americans, despite the efforts of the forces of repression.

[The wielders of those forces didn’t go away, of course, and they would come out to fight some more in the years to come, but there were enough supporters of free expression and the First Amendment to push back and send the would-be repressors back into their hidey holes for a time.

[But they never gave up, so I kept adding posts to ROT from time to time, railing against those who’d silence the artists, thinkers, and imaginative conceivers.  Now, however, those would-be silencers and cancelers have assaulted the high ground and may soon take it because the top official of the nation is leading them rather than just urging them on from the safety of the White House—and his minions are all falling in line behind him instead of standing against the assailants, as an effective few had done before.

[Just last week, I reposted Indira Etwaroo’s article from American Theatre, “The Arts and the Battle for the Soul of Civilization” (4 May 2025), in which I exclaimed with foreboding, “The culture war is specifically assaulting our arts institutions as surely as the Russians are assaulting Ukraine’s cities and infrastructures.”

[So, now comes Rob Weinert-Kendt, editor of American Theatre, and his colleague Daniella Ignacio, a contributing editor at AT, with a pair of reports on the latest—right up to a week or so ago—actions taken by the culture warrior-in-chief.]

“TRUMP PROPOSES ELIMINATION OF NEA AND NEH”
by Rob Weinert-Kendt

[The first of Weinert-Kendt’s reports from the culture warfront was posted on the American Theatre website on 2 May 2025]

The administration’s 2026 budget comes at a time when the future of NEA staff and grant programs remains in doubt. 

WASHINGTON, D.C.: President Trump has released a 2026 budget proposal [see “Major Discretionary Funding Changes,” the linked document, under “Small Agency Eliminations: Cuts, Reductions, and Consolidations,” pp. 39-40] which includes, among many deep cuts to federal spending, the wholesale elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts [NEA], the National Endowment for the Humanities [NEH], and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting [CPB], as well as several other federal and regional cultural agencies.

We have been here before: In 2017 and 2018, the first Trump administration released budget proposals that included the elimination of these same entities, but they were preserved thanks to the work of arts advocates and Congressional support, including elected Republicans. This time, however, with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) given free rein to scrutinize and slash federal spending and a flurry of executive orders [EO] issued by the president which target specific organizations and programs—not to mention the apparent unwillingness of Congress to contravene the President—this new threat of termination must be taken more seriously.

The NEA has largely been spared direct fire from the new administration to date, at least by contrast to the NEH, which had its staff drastically reduced and grants rescinded, and the CPB, the target of a recent executive order demanding that it stop funding PBS [Public Broadcasting Service] and NPR [National Public Radio]. The arts endowment hasn’t been entirely exempt from the new administration’s interventions: In February, new compliance guidelines appeared to require grant applicants to assent to Trump’s anti-DEI and anti-trans executive orders, and to certify that their work would not promote DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] or “gender ideology.” Both strictures were temporarily halted, the latter thanks to a lawsuit led by the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union; see below for links to additional information] (and joined by Theatre Communications Group [TCG], the publisher of this magazine), though a judge later declined to block the NEA from reimposing that requirement, instead allowing the agency’s internal process to proceed (with a deadline of April 30). At the same time, the court made clear that reimposition would likely violate the First Amendment.

The endowment met that deadline this week with an updated document signed by NEA senior adviser Mary Anne Carter [nominated on 6 May as Chairman of the agency] that seems to try to split the difference. It affirms that the president’s executive order “requires executive agencies to take all necessary steps, as permitted by law, to ensure that agency funds are not used to promote gender ideology,” adding that “the NEA will implement EO 14168 [issued on 20 January] on a grant-by-grant basis.” It takes pains to assure applicants that they “will not be required to certify that no federal funds are used to promote gender ideology,” and “that there is no eligibility bar to submitting an application related to promoting gender ideology.” They add that the agency’s long-standing criteria for applications leaves “no room for viewpoint discrimination.”

So how will the administration’s anti-trans order be enforced? While Carter’s letter reiterates the primacy of standards of “artistic merit” and “artistic excellence,” she states that in evaluating projects on a grant-by-grant basis the NEA’s chair may also take “into consideration general standards of decency and respect for the diverse beliefs and values of the American public.”

The language about “eligibility bar,” “viewpoint discrimination,” as well as the qualification “as permitted by law,” can all be read as responses to the ACLU’s challenge, which cited in part a First Amendment objection to the implementation of the executive order. Said Lynette Labinger, cooperating attorney for the ACLU of Rhode Island, “Unless the NEA clarifies otherwise, this information does not eliminate the significant concerns addressed in our lawsuit.”

Meanwhile, rumors have been swirling for the past week that DOGE visited the NEA last week and that major staffing changes are imminent. Grantees are no less uncertain about their future: While grant recipients from last year’s first funding cycle (GAP [Grants for Arts Projects] 1) who have not yet been reimbursed are wondering when they’ll find out if their payments will come at all, applicants who received offer letters for last year’s second funding cycle (GAP 2), who would have typically received an official award by February or March, have been told their grants are still under review. Applicants for most recent current grant cycle, for which the deadline was April 7, wouldn’t normally find out results until December, but there’s nothing normal about the current moment.

The timeline so far: 

January 15: NEA grant awards for FY2025 were announced. Within the theatre category, 148 grants were awarded for a total of $3,730,000. Within musical theatre, 29 grants were awarded for a total of $930,000.

January 20: Maria Rosario Jackson stepped down as chair of the NEA [appointed by President Biden on 18 December 2021; resigned on 20 January 2025]. Mary Anne Carter, who served as chair in 2019 under the previous Trump administration, is the current senior adviser [as noted above, nominated by President Trump to be chairman]. 

February: When NEA grant details and applications for FY2026 were posted, the NEA imposed a certification requirement and funding prohibition in response to President Trump’s order prohibiting federal funding of anything that “promotes gender ideology.”

March 6: The ACLU, the ACLU of Rhode Island, David Cole, and Lynette Labinger, cooperating counsel for the ACLU-RI, filed a suit in the U.S. District Court of Rhode Island on behalf of arts organizations applying for NEA funding.

March 7: Just a day after the suit was filed, the NEA temporarily rescinded the attestation requirement and funding prohibition after the lawsuit was filed.

March 11: Original deadline for part 1 of grant applications for the upcoming cycle. 

March 14: NEA applicant portal’s extension opened. 

March 24: Original deadline for part 2 of grant applications for the upcoming cycle. 

April 4: The U.S. District Court of Rhode Island refused to block the NEA from reimposing a restriction on funding for projects deemed to promote “gender ideology,” even as they maintained that the rule likely violates the First Amendment.

April 7: Part 2 deadline closed. 

April 30: Evaluation said to have been completed. The formal notice of the Executive Order [EO 14168] was released. 

American Theatre’s coverage of the NEA in the past year is here.

[Rob Weinert-Kendt is editor-in-chief of American Theatre.  He was the founding editor-in-chief of Back Stage West and writes about theater for the New York Times, Time Out New York, and the Los Angeles Times.  He studied film at the University of Southern California and is a composer member of the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theater Workshop.]

*  *  *  *
“NEA ABRUPTLY PULLS ARTS GRANTS ON A MASSIVE SCALE”
by Daniella Ignacio and Rob Weinert-Kendt

[Weinert-Kendt collaborated with writer, digital storyteller, theater artist, and musician Ignacio, who’s a colleague at American Theatre, on another report three days later on 5 May 2025.]

Arts organizations, including dozens of theatre companies, had NEA grants withdrawn or terminated late last week, and leadership resignations at the endowment bode ill.

Call it a Friday night massacre: On the evening of May 2—just hours after the Trump administration released a proposed budget [see link in above article] that would entirely eliminate [. . .] both the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), among dozens of other federal agencies—hundreds of arts organizations of all sizes and kinds across the U.S. received emails from the NEA withdrawing pending grants and terminating existing ones, in amounts ranging from $10,000 to $100,000, earmarked for production costs, educational programming, new-work development, artists’ pay, and more.

Without variation, these missives included this explanatory statement:

The NEA is updating its grantmaking policy priorities to focus funding on projects that reflect the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President. Consequently, we are terminating awards that fall outside these new priorities. The NEA will now prioritize projects that elevate the Nation’s HBCUs and Hispanic Serving Institutions, celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, foster AI competency, empower houses of worship to serve communities, assist with disaster recovery, foster skilled trade jobs, make America healthy again, support the military and veterans, support Tribal communities, make the District of Columbia safe and beautiful, and support the economic development of Asian American communities. Funding is being allocated in a new direction in furtherance of the Administration’s agenda.

American Theatre heard from dozens of theatre organizations about these sudden withdrawals over the weekend, and we are gathering more information on the scale of the damage as we report (please reach out to at@tcg.org if your grant was cancelled). What seems to be the case from our reporting so far—and from that of other publications—is that these cuts were sweeping, affecting grants for everything from new-play festivals to large resident houses, from edgy alternative venues to Theatres for Young Audiences and classical theatres, without regard to mission or merit.

One telling sign that the supposed new grantmaking criteria in the boilerplate language above are likely a smokescreen for an across-the-board policy of destruction: Of 148 grants offered last fall to various theatre projects, the one that could definitely be characterized as going to a “Hispanic Serving Institution,” the Chicago Latino Theater Alliance, also received a notice last Friday rescinding a grant of $20,000 to support the next iteration of Destinos: Chicago International Latino Theater Festival.

The response from theatres—some of whom had awards withdrawn that had been offered and announced but never fully contracted, others of whom had existing grants “terminated” mid-stream, and many of whom got notices of both kinds—has been swift and strong. Portland Playhouse in Oregon, which had a $25,000 grant to support a production of Joe Turner’s Come and Gone withdrawn just 24 hours before the show’s opening night, quickly replaced that money by reaching out to donors, and today announced a new statewide GoFundMe fundraising campaign called Keep the Story Alive: Oregon Arts Rising to recover the $590,000 in NEA grants lost in total by all Oregon arts organizations, and to distribute those funds evenly across the affected groups.

“This is about more than a show,” said Portland Playhouse artistic director Brian Weaver. “It’s about what happens when we stand together to say what we’ve always known to be true: The arts are kept alive by the community that surrounds them; we will not let our stages go quiet.” He concluded, “Let’s show the nation what happens when Oregon refuses to stay silent, and let’s remind them that the arts are worth fighting for.”

In yet more distressing news, today the NEA’s 10 remaining directors of disciplines—i.e., the heads of different grant categories—announced that they had accepted offers to “leave the agency through the Deferred Resignation Program or, if eligible, retirement,” to quote the resignation letter from Greg Reiner, who has headed the theatre and musical theatre disciplines since July 2015. He wrote: “It is with a mix of sadness and pride that I share the news today that my 10 years at the NEA will come to a close on May 30 . . . [.] Serving you all through my work here has been the honor of a lifetime. Seeing firsthand the power of theatre to transform lives for the better through the work you are doing across our nation has been a privilege and an inspiration.” He indicated that theatre specialists Ouida Maedel and Ian-Julian Williams would remain on staff.

Other reports have indicated that the endowment is facing a 50 percent staff reduction overall. How the NEA will continue to function and administer and distribute any grants going forward remains to be seen. The endowment’s FY25 budget is $210 million—roughly .0031 percent of the federal budget.

Shock and Loss

Meanwhile, stories from theatres who’ve had awards withdrawn and/or terminated have poured in. Jesse Berger at New York City’s classics-oriented Red Bull Theater said the $20,000 hole left in their budget was “sadly not a surprise given what this administration has been doing for the last 100 days. It’s a lot like The Government Inspector, but not funny.”

[For the theatrically deprived reader, the reference to The Government Inspector is to an 1836 farce (also known as The Inspector General) by Nikolai Gogol (Russian; 1809-52) in which a poor, minor civil servant is mistaken by the buffoonish officials of a provincial town for a government inspector who’s come to investigate the corruption in the town. They all fawn on the clerk to prevent him from discovering their malfeasance, and he encourages this. His deception is only revealed after he’s left town and the real inspector arrives.]

Another NYC-based theatre, National Queer Theater, reported a canceled grant of $20,000, with artistic director Adam Odsess-Rubin commenting, “Artistic censorship is a horrible feeling. I hope every theatre company and artist in the country fights this injustice.”

Playwright Beto O’Byrne’s company Radical Evolution [Brooklyn, NY; nb: the linked AT article on Meropi Peponides, cofounder of Radical Evolution, contains a link to the theater’s website] was set to develop its first Off-Broadway commission with an NEA grant of $50,000, also rescinded. “Whether or not that commission continues is in serious jeopardy,” said O’Byrne.

In the Bay Area, San Francisco International Arts Festival, New Conservatory Theatre Center [San Francisco], American Conservatory Theater [San Francisco], and TheatreWorks Silicon Valley [Palo Alto] were among the orgs that lost grants. TheatreWorks Silicon Valley artistic director Giovanna Sardelli reported the withdrawal of a $10,000 grant to support the company’s Core Writers Group, which consists of emerging and seasoned Bay Area theatre writers, including 2025 Tony nominee Jonathan Spector [Eureka Day (2024); Best Revival of a Play]. “It is disheartening and infuriating that vibrant artistic voices are being sidelined due to funding that we are told is now ‘being allocated in a new direction in furtherance of the administration’s agenda,’” Sardelli said.

Said playwright Elisa Bocanegra [nb: this AT article on and by Bocanegra contains a link to the Hero Theatre, which she founded], whose L.A.-based company Hero Theatre lost not one but two grants, “While I wasn’t surprised, I’m hurt. . . [.] I run a mission-driven theatre that services women and children in shelters, and artists who have been (beyond) harmed by working in American theatre. I created an environmental initiative to help educate and heal. Wow, this hurts.”

On social media, playwright Patrick Gabridge commented that new-play development got “a kick in the teeth” from Friday’s NEA grant decisions, citing funds taken from Seven Devils Playwrights Conference [McCall, Idaho], the New Harmony Project [New Harmony and Indianapolis, Indiana], and the Great Plains Theatre Commons (GPTC [Omaha, Nebraska]). “Not a shock, but it still hurts. So many didn’t make it through the pandemic, and now this.”

Indeed, GPTC received its rescission message just weeks away from its annual New Play Festival, to be held May 25-31. The company had already been spending funds with a reasonable expectation of reimbursement on a $35,000 award that was announced in January, and in normal times would have reached them by February or March.

“The NEA withdrawal of funding to arts organizations across the country is devastating on many levels for the organizations affected and the communities they serve, but it’s also another step in our deepening national crisis,” GPTC artistic director Kevin Lawler said in a statement. 

In the D.C. area, theatres and artists confirmed to have been notified that they lost NEA funding included Mosaic Theatre Company [Washington], Round House Theatre [Bethesda, Maryland], Signature Theatre (though it already received its funding for its production of In The Heights when they received the notification [this Arlington, Virginia, company shouldn’t be confused with the Signature Theatre Company, an Off-Broadway troupe located in New York City]), the IN Series [Washington] for its production of Ethiopia, Atlas Arts Lab [Washington], Chesapeake Shakespeare Company (CSC) [Baltimore], and Julianne Brienza, the founder of D.C.’s Capital Fringe.

Chesapeake Shakespeare Company (CSC), was also hit with a loss close to showtime, in their case $50,000 for the company’s Shakespeare Beyond touring shows, which they offered for free to more than 8,000 people in a dozen Maryland neighborhoods last year. Though the company had already decided not to apply for the same grant for 2026, CSC founding artistic director Ian Gallanar said that CSC was “obviously saddened by the NEA’s decision. Right now, we are scrambling to hold our 2025 summer season together, and figuring out where to go from here.”

Creede Repertory Theatre of Colorado has been receiving grants from the NEA since 1974, which have helped the small theatre in a “tiny frontier town” of 400 residents build educational touring programs for rural and remote communities. Artistic director Emily Van Fleet reported that the $20,000 grant to support its Headwaters New Play Program was withdrawn. The program commissions, develops, and produces new American plays and amplifies the voices and culture of the San Luis Valley of Colorado and the rural Southwestern U.S. for audiences of all ages. With or without NEA funding, Van Fleet said, “We will continue this vital work.” 

In Atlanta, True Colors Theatre Company had a $25,000 grant rescinded for the production of a new bilingual play by Darrel Alejandro Holnes. They also have $43,000 still remaining to be paid (out of a $75,000 total award), which was to be distributed for reimbursement for a new-work development program for Black theatres across the country. 

At the Classical Theatre of Harlem, the NEA unexpectedly rescinded critical funding for CTH’s upcoming summer production, the East Coast premiere of Will Power’s Memnon. This puts at risk not only free public performances that reach more than 30,000 audience members annually, but also hundreds of jobs for artists, crew, and local vendors, and an estimated $600,000 in economic impact for Harlem. The company has launched an emergency fundraising appeal and invited the public to join its “Hold ’Em in Harlem” annual gala fundraiser at the Renaissance Harlem Hotel Ballroom on May 22.

“This isn’t just a line item—it’s a devastating blow to the working artists, small businesses, and Harlem families who count on this production every year,” producing artistic director Ty Jones said in a statement. “This is a fight for cultural equity, artistic freedom, and the soul of Uptown.”

For NYC’s Public Theater, the loss of funds for programming at Joe’s Pub and for free Shakespeare programs like the Mobile Unit and Public Works “isn’t the end of the world,” conceded executive director Patrick Willingham, given the theatre’s budget size. But he knows that for many smaller companies, and for the field at large, the “downstream philanthropic danger is as bad as this rescission,” particularly for organizations that rely on matching private funds with public money.

More importantly, Willingham takes seriously what the cutting of funding for the arts “says about our country, and the value of a healthy democracy. This is actually at the core of who we are, and the signal this sends—we should actually be quite frightened. At least until this moment, there has been a federal commitment to support the arts; it has been shaken and tested in the last few decades, but there was at least an understanding that funding the arts and the humanities is crucial to our democracy. I’m not making this up—that’s in the language of how the NEA was created.” This attack on that fundamental principle, he said, “is more than a shot across the bow—it’s a torpedo into the engine room.” 

Some companies have lost grants that had already been reduced from earlier expectations. Jenni Werner, artistic director of the New Harmony Project in New Harmony, Indiana, said that the company applied for funding for their annual writers residency, which takes 25 writers to New Harmony for a 10-day residency, as well as for an annual play festival [PlayFest Indy] that they run in Indianapolis. When they were offered $40,000, Werner said they decided “to reduce the residency, which is what we have gotten funding from the NEA for decades,” and to significantly reduce the fall festival. “NEA staff urged us to make that simplification and to focus on one project.” 

They’re still going forward with the residency in a couple of weeks. “We’re not cancelling it,” said Werner, who admitted she hasn’t been expecting to receive the money since Trump’s inauguration and has been seeking alternative funding sources. Still, the way last week’s sudden cancellation was handled “seems like an insult,” she said.

At New Paradigm Theatre (NPT) in [Stamford] Connecticut, funds for a new production of Hairspray were withdrawn, leaving them in need of an additional $10,000 and making this year’s gala, themed as a “Live Taping of the Corny Collins Show,” hit harder. NPT artistic director Kristin Huffman called the funding loss “a gut punch. Our production costs exceed $62,000, and this gala is our main fundraising event. We hope our supporters and newcomers to NPT will recognize the importance of our work and join us for an enjoyable evening.”

There have also been international ripples. [Melbourne] Australian theatre company Fairly Lucid Productions was preparing to board Fiji Airways Flight 870 to travel to and perform Ben Noble’s play Member (about the murders of gay men, including UC Berkeley student Scott Johnson, in Sydney, Australia, in the 1970s and ’80s) at the San Francisco International Arts Festival this week [8-11 May], when they discovered that the NEA had pulled a $20,000 grant the endowment had promised to fund their performance as part of the festival. The grant was first offered last November—and then pulled in the middle of the two-week festival that it was awarded to support.

Festival director Andrew Wood struck a defiant note in a statement. “Trump will not stop us,” he said. “The festival is happening and we are moving forward regardless. Everyone has their visas and their plane tickets; they are coming here to join us and the show will go on.”

Wood zoomed out to add, “Our grant is just a very small part of a much bigger overall picture. What Project 2025 imagines is a gutting of this country’s democratic institutions and the First Amendment rights that go with them. They have chosen to attack the arts community as one way to achieve this. But they have made a big mistake. We will coordinate with other sectors and fight back—and we will win.”

Advocacy efforts thus far are focusing not only fundraising but on challenging the withdrawals of the funds on legal and procedural grounds. Those who received termination notices were given seven days to appeal the decision (not seven business days, just seven days, which included last weekend). Advocates are encouraging those impacted to appeal and to file the final financial report by the noted deadline, as termination letters noted failure to do so “may result in your organization being ineligible for future National Endowment for the Arts funding opportunities.”

[TCG hosted a 90-minute webinar on these developments on Thursday, May 8, at 1 p.m. ET.  (This event has passed and I don’t know if there’s a recording of it that’s accessible.  If any reader is interested, I suggest contacting TCG for information: 520 Eighth Avenue Floor 20, Suite 2000, New York, NY 10018-4156; telephone: 1-212-609-5900; e-mail: info@tcg.org.)] 

*  *  *  *
“TRUMP’S ‘NEW PRIORITIES’: BAY AREA ARTS GROUPS
STUNNED BY NEA GRANT CANCELLATIONS”
by Aidin Vaziri

[In an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, posted on the website on 3 May 2025 and updated 4 May, Bay Area journalist Aidin Vaziri gives a sampling of how the Trump administration’s actions and proposals are affecting regional arts organizations, including regional theater companies.   

[These are real-world people, workers in the field of the arts and consumers of their product, not bureaucrats and administrators in Washington.  What these folks are experiencing is the same thing artists and art consumers are experiencing in Atlanta, Houston, Seattle, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Boston.]

Several Bay Area arts organizations were blindsided after the National Endowment for the Arts abruptly rescinded their federal grants, part of a broader Trump administration overhaul of federal arts policy that has upended cultural institutions nationwide.

Many arts nonprofits in the region, including San Francisco’s New Conservatory Theatre Center, the Oakland Theater Project and Circo Zero [San Francisco], received termination notices Friday stating their projects no longer aligned with the administration’s newly defined priorities.

Among the other casualties: Frameline [San Francisco], which has produced the annual San Francisco International LGBTQ+ Film Festival for 49 years, and the San Francisco International Arts Festival, which lost its NEA funding while it was in the middle of a two-week program the grant supported. 

The NEA emails cited a pivot toward funding projects that “reflect the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President,” including efforts to celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, foster AI competency, support military veterans and empower houses of worship.

“Consequently, we are terminating awards that fall outside these new priorities,” the letter stated.

Projects focused on underserved communities or diversity in the arts, once a central pillar of NEA funding, are now excluded.

The New Conservatory Theatre Center received notice that its $20,000 grant for the world premiere of “Simple Mexican Pleasures” has been rescinded. 

In the message addressed to Executive Director Barbara Hodgen, the NEA cited a shift in agency priorities under the Trump administration, stating that the project no longer aligns with new funding goals.

Circo Zero, a dance organization that promotes BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color] and LGBTQ participation in technical theater roles, saw its $50,000 NEA grant halted. Artistic Director Keith Hennessy said the group had already spent much of the money and is awaiting a final reimbursement. 

“Some of us are halfway through a project and have already been partially reimbursed,” Hennessy said in an email to the Chronicle. “Some were awarded money, signed contracts, and committed to many artists and staff, but have not started it yet, so this announcement is more of a ‘pulling the rug out,’ destabilizing their upcoming production.”

The effort to defund identity-centered arts groups “is nothing short of an attempt to censor our art, control our history, and erase our lived experiences,” said Allegra Madsen, executive director of Frameline, which will hold its 49th annual LGBTQ+ film festival in June despite losing its $20,000 NEA grant.

“We remain committed to uplifting queer and trans artists and their stories,” Madsen said. “More than ever, our whole community needs to show up and support each other.”

The NEA rescinded funding for Opera Parallèle’s upcoming “Harvey Milk Reimagined,” which honors one of the nation’s foremost LGBTQ+ leaders [composer: Stewart Wallace; librettist: Michael Korie; 31 May, 1, 6, 7 June], six months after sending a congratulatory letter on the production, said Elizabeth Brodersen, interim managing director of the San Francisco company.

[Harvey Milk (1930-78) became in 1978 the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for 11 months before being assassinated on 27 November 1978 by fellow Supervisor Dan White (1946-85), along with then-Mayor George Moscone (1929-78), at San Francisco City Hall. The tragic opera celebrates Milk’s enduring legacy and contributions to the nascent LGBTQ movement, his early life in New York, and relocation to San Francisco. The opera has been revised for OP into two acts instead of three, with new music and a smaller cast from its original Houston Grand Opera première in 1995 and San Francisco Opera début in 1996.]

“This reversal undermines the NEA’s standing as an arbiter of artistic excellence,” Brodersen said.

A $20,000 NEA grant to the San Francisco International Arts Festival was also canceled, just as Australian theater company Fairly Lucid Productions was preparing to fly to the city under the funding for a performance starting Thursday.

“Trump will not stop us,” Executive Director Andrew Wood said in an email about the festival, which is running through Sunday. “The festival is happening and we are moving forward regardless. Everyone has their visas and their plane tickets and, in the same manner as Fairly Lucid Productions, they are coming here to join us and the show will go on.”

The San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, which plans a concert next Saturday [10 May] at Brava Theater, lost a $20,000 NEA award, according to Executive Director Richard Aldag.

“The loss of $20K is a major fiscal blow to our organization,” Aldag said in an email to the Chronicle. “We need to let our community know what’s going on in D.C.”

Circus Bella of San Francisco also lost its $30,000 grant for the summer season of Circus in the Parks, which is free to the public. 

The Oakland Theater Project had been awarded $30,000 for the 2026 world premiere of “Moby Dick,” by playwright Erik Ehn. Managing Director Colin Mandlin said the company has received only half the funds, adding that plans for the production may need to be scaled back.

Meanwhile, Danielle Grant, director of programs at SCRAP, San Francisco’s creative reuse depot, lost a $25,000 grant intended to fund sustainable fashion workshops for underserved youth.

“We don’t fit any of those ‘new priorities,’” Grant told KQED.

The NEA confirmed that projects outside the administration’s new focus areas are being terminated effective May 31. Organizations have until June 30 to request final payments for completed work. Appeals must be filed within seven days.

Uncertainty looms for organizations with pending NEA applications. 

Andrew Smith, executive director of the Lab in San Francisco, said his organization anticipated the shift and moved NEA-funded programming forward to ensure reimbursement. But like many in the region, he’s uncertain about future support.

The upheaval extends beyond the NEA. 

Last month, the National Endowment for the Humanities began informing state humanities councils and grantees that their funding was also being terminated immediately. 

In some cases, notices were sent from a Department of Government Efficiency email address and signed by NEH acting chairman Michael McDonald. 

“Your grant’s immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities,” the letters said. “The termination of your grant represents an urgent priority for the administration, and due to exceptional circumstances, adherence to the traditional notification process is not possible.”

The NEH, whose $207 million annual budget is distributed largely through state agencies, had awarded $22.6 million in grants just six days before President Donald Trump returned to office. 

Those included funding for regional museum exhibitions, inclusive historical programming and local cultural preservation initiatives — many of which have now been nullified. 

California Humanities, which had regranted NEH funds to several Bay Area groups, is among the affected.

These sweeping changes follow Trump’s earlier efforts to shutter the NEH, NEA and Institute of Museum and Library Services entirely. 

The administration has also pressured the Smithsonian Institution to alter museum programming, purged political opponents from the Kennedy Center board, and launched a crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across federally funded cultural institutions.

Warren Pederson contributed to this report.

[Aidin Vaziri is a staff writer at the San Francisco Chronicle.  He produces news, health, and entertainment stories for San Francisco’s major daily newspaper.  He’s also written for Rolling Stone, National Geographic, MTV, Amazon, E! Networks, and other outlets.

[I wrote up top that I’ve written or reposted several articles on ROT that concerned the support, funding, or teaching of the arts,  I think this is a sufficiently important topic, especially just now—as I think the pieces I’ve posted above will attest—that I should list the ones I’ve published on this blog over the last 16 years.  The list is fairly long, but I’ll append the entire list here.

[First, I want to single out two oldies that bear on the subject.  In their own ways, these are both extraordinary essays, and I think worth taking a look at now, one 61 years after it was published in Commentary, a monthly magazine on religion, Judaism, Israel, and politics, as well as social and cultural issues; the other only 35 years since publication in The Nation.

[Paul Goodman’s “‘Observations: A New Deal for the Arts’” (posted here on 18 September 2019), is surprising because Goodman (1911-72) was a committed libertarian and radical, but he was opposed to state-supported art.  He explains why in his article for Commentary of January 1964.  (As I note in my introduction to the posting, the essay was written before the National Endowment for the Arts was created in 1965, though it was being discussed.)  Goodman, by the way, was a great friend and supporter of the radical and experimental Living Theatre.

[“‘Arts and the State’” by Paul Mattick, Jr., was published in The Nation, a progressive monthly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis, on 1 October 1990.  I reposted it on ROT on 14 November 2021.  Mattick (1904-81) was a Marxist writer, political philosopher, and social revolutionary, who blamed the right-wing politicians for waging the culture war of the Reagan-Bush I-Bush II era.

[The rest of the pertinent posts on my list are all contemporary.  Some I wrote, while others are reposts.  (Some of the titles here include more than one article.)

“Degrading the Arts,” 13 August 2009

“The First Amendment & The Arts,” 8 May 2010

“‘The Arts Are Under Attack (Again!)’” by Paul Molloy, 22 May 2011

“‘Are the Arts a Luxury?’” by K. C. Boyle, 29 January 2012

“‘Don’t Sit Back – Push Back’” by Paul Molloy, 1 June 2012

“‘Flaunting The Spirit Of Support For The Arts’” by James R. Oestreich, 30 May 2013

“Culture War,” 6 February 2014

“The First Amendment & The Arts, Redux,” 13 February 2015

“‘A History of the National Endowment for the Arts,” 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 30 November, 3, 13, 16, and 19 December 2023

“‘The Courage to Produce: A Conversation on High School Censorship’” by Allison Considine, Jessica Lit, Jordan Stovall, and Nadine Smith, 21 April 2024

“America’s Culture War—Now at Your Local Theater” by Cristina Pla-Guzman and Daniel Blank, 25 October 2024

“‘The Arts And The Battle For The Soul Of Civilization’” by Dr. Indira Etwaroo, 4 May 2025

 

[It’s a somewhat daunting list, I guess.  Of course, I assembled it over the course of 16 years, as I said.  Besides, it’s an enduring issue, and it’s just heating up again.  There may yet be several more Rick On Theater posts to add.]