June 12, 2025
“It’s never been more dire than it is now.”
Why the 2025 cuts to NEA / NEH / PBS matter
The facts bear repeating. Some have forgotten and many never knew them. The National Endowment for the Arts was formed in 1965 to help nurture the arts as they have been supported in countries older and more culturally invested than ours. Lyndon Johnson signed into law the act that created the NEA and the National Endowment for the Humanities, saying, “We in America have not always been kind to the artists and the scholars who are the creators and the keepers of our vision.” That vision encompasses our shared history and the record of how all of us came to live as Americans.
The NEA serves the entire country. 40% of the grant budget is awarded to the states to distribute through their programs, and the other 60% goes to those who apply for grants directly through the NEA. The money is not intended as a handout; it's development funding that is still critical and demonstrably generative. From Forbes Magazine (2023): "According to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, the nation’s arts and entertainment sector (nonprofit and commercial) is a $1.02 trillion industry that supports 4.9 million jobs and is 4.2 percent of the nation’s economy – larger than sectors such as construction, transportation, and agriculture.” And from NASAA stats: "Every $1 the NEA invests in grants leverages $9 in local and private matches.” That funding is seed money for the work of writers, painters, sculptors, musicians, actors, dancers, designers, directors, architects, folk artists, teachers, arts administrators - all those who help show and tell the diverse stories of how we’ve survived and thrived on the planet. And those stories are about doctors, nurses, lawyers, bankers, teachers, farmers, politicians, soldiers, laborers, and the rest. All of us. The stories include yours.
So even if you don’t support the arts, they support you. They give everyone a voice, a name, a platform. That’s their job, and their unique value. It also creates debate: because the arts are by nature subjective, they cannot and should not please or even appeal to everyone. Happily, we’ll never agree on everything. That’s the point. There are as many perspectives as there are people, and the power of the arts is in their capacity to explore all of them and to create forms of communicating ideas about them. It’s the only sector whose purpose is personal expression. The product is not from a factory but from an idea you may or may not share or even understand - though even if you don’t, it can still engage you and speak to you. But regardless of intent or content, it is a product, created as professionally as any on an assembly line, and it's a proven sector of the economy and a community driver.
Many people have only the vaguest idea of how the arts are made. It's seldom simple and requires time, skill, strategy, and often lots of hands working in unison. A few years ago I was directing a technical rehearsal for a play and someone who knew nothing about the process was there. After an hour of watching us (a team of dozens, most of whom the audience never sees) stop often to adjust timing of lighting and projections, rhythm of entrances and exits, tweaks to levels and mix of microphones, and notes to the cast about integrating all those things, the man (a chemist) said to me with faint amazement, "This is work!" And that was just one hour of one project, and a schedule that often takes a year or more and sometimes hundreds of people in a painstaking process of concept through execution. (This business is glamorous about 5% of the time, and mainly to those who aren't in it.)
Seeing a finished arts product can make it seem easy, even fun. That's as it should be, but knowing about the work behind it comes in handy when it comes to economics and "the bottom line.” In the commercial world of Broadway, generally non musicals are capitalized at $3 to 5 million each, and musicals at $10 to 20 million - standard costs for goods and professional services in that arena. This year, Boop! The Musical was capitalized at $26 million, and closed after only 112 performances, losing all of that $26m - after 25 years of development to even get it produced. Years ago when producing costs began to balloon, the late great Harold Prince cashed in his iconic six-decade career chips, saying “I stopped producing because I didn’t want to raise $10 million. I’m not sure I could and I wouldn’t want to make the effort.” Contrast that with the non-profit regional option. A single professional production at that level costs, minimally, $100,000. Not a drop in the bucket but hardly the fortune it takes to roll the dice on Broadway.
What you see in a finished product (center of image) surrounded by what it takes to finish it.
The need for an alternative to the volatile commercial arts world is what’s always driven the regional movement that the NEA has helped support. Professional non profit regional theatres, for example, developed all over the country from the 40’s forward as artists wanted to create more opportunities beyond Broadway and communities realized those theatres brought them an arts standard, an economic building block, and a cultural hub they could call their own. A regional theatre’s operation creates a format for predictable production with professional standards. Regional production isn’t exactly cheap, but it enables an entire season of productions to be staged for $30 million and under, a fraction of comparable Broadway costs. ($30m is the top of the range; many professional regional theatres produce annual seasons on $1m-10m expense budgets, depending on theatre size and tier). By the 90's these companies were in virtually every major and mid-size U.S. market, with the help of the NEA and local agencies, bringing potential for a new producing path, as well as a research-and-development network for new scripts, new ideas, and of course employment. (The regional movement significantly supports arts careers. For example, The League of Resident Theatres (LORT), is an alliance of the largest professional nonprofit theatres in the U.S. Collectively they offer more contracts to professional actors and stage managers than Broadway and national tours combined.)
In 1961 when the Ford Foundation gave $9 million to boost U.S. regional theatre expansion, there were a dozen or so professional companies; by 2023 there were 2,000+ (via Theatre Communications Group). A form of the same has happened in every discipline. Film producer/director Sidney Pollack (Tootsie, Out of Africa) said, "There are an awful lot of talented people in the U.S. who can't get in the position to get someone to give them 15 or 20 million to make a picture. So there's been what we call regional filmmaking, or independent filmmaking.” The same applies to PBS. Since its founding in 1969, it has grown to include 544 grantees (television and radio) countrywide, 245 of them in rural areas (via Corporation for Public Broadcasting).
But even those alternatives are challenging. I spent 30 years in the non-profit arts world developing several companies, and this I can say: there is no fat on that bottom line. Nonprofits typically derive a maximum of 60% of their budget from earned income sources. The equation for survival is an ever-shifting balance of sales, special events, education programs, and investment income, along with grants and gifts. That equation has been disrupted by changing entertainment and attendance trends, and of course by the pandemic, just as commercial theatre has faced its own challenges. After a devastating Covid period, Broadway had its best financial year ever last year, but attendance didn't set that record, sales receipts did, driven by popular actors in shows that drew audiences willing to pay new single ticket highs of $900+ to see them. But that also makes the work dependent on too few and inaccessible for too many. (How often do you pay $900 to see a play?) “Stars" are a small percentage of the unions, and they aren’t the lifeblood of most regional theatres, where a much lower pay scale can’t compete. But everyone likes working on something interesting, and regional theatres increase the options for challenge and exploration. Bonnie Franklin joined us for a play at Charlotte Rep after she’d starred for a decade in the CBS/Norman Lear series One Day at a Time. She was first a stage actor who wanted to return to those roots for one play. She was a guest on the regular Rep team, and the company’s ongoing success didn’t have to depend on her name or that of any visiting artist, but on an ensemble of terrific actors, known and not.
As commercial producing costs have skyrocketed, we've seen the models that built those regional alternatives begin to fail, becoming obsolete in the wake of unpredictable recessions and disasters, shifting demographics, and endless new entertainment choices available at your fingertips without leaving home. Some nonprofits have survived but for most the waves of change have come exponentially faster and higher than these infrastrucure-heavy companies can absorb. Drastic staff and program reductions are the norm today, and closings of once healthy decades-old companies are routine. In a 2023 NY Times interview, NEA theatre director Greg Reiner said, “We’re seeing two to three organizations closing a month now.” In 2022, New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre, a major regional theatre founded in 1965, moved out of its building and became an itinerant company to save money. A friend who works at a well-established and (for now) well supported theatre described it to me as "never more dire than it is now.” And that was before the proposed NEA cuts. NEA support may or may not make the difference (we are likely seeing the end of this era for the arts) but with such a sudden pull of the funding plug, many won't have the chance they were promised to find out, or a reasonable opportunity to reinvent the wheel.
Losing the regional nonprofit component of the arts mix affects not only artists’ employment, it impacts communities. Again, Forbes: “Nationally these organizations generated an additional 78.4 billion to event-related expenditures by their audiences.” And it also closes a development door for commercial potential. Many successful Broadway productions, including the phenomenon Hamilton and the 2025 Pulitzer Prize/Tony Award winning play Purpose, had long gestation periods being tested at multiple nonprofits before landing on Broadway. That kind of jackpot success is too capricious to be a given or an actual goal, but the odds for quality can improve with the more affordable, focused development time nonprofits can provide. And the odds could stand improving: historically only 20% of Broadway shows ever even recoup their investment, let alone turn a profit. Accepting the 2025 Best Play award for Purpose on the Tony Awards telecast, playwright Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins said, “I encourage everyone to support their local theatre. A lot of great stuff happens in New York but a lot more happens out in rhe regions. So use your next commercial break to google ‘a local theatre near me’!”
It's essential to balance a budget, as it is for businesses to rethink sustainability, especially the arts. But that arc is a marathon not a sprint, especially for the arts, where long established practices in America include grants like those from the NEA. Sudden, arbitrary cuts to that funding (or of entire agencies) may make a hollow philosophical point but they will have deeper negative effects on economies (arts and related sectors
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If we are in a(nother) debate about the validity of public funding for the arts, which is a fair if not essential conversation to have, that should happen in tandem with an awareness of the facts and the implications, and a clear, sensible timetable to reconceive organizations and fiscal responsibility for them. Again, it's a marathon. The NEA's 60 year existence is not even as long as the average life expectancy of a human, let alone a cultural paradigm. The appropriation to the NEA typically constitutes about 0.003% of the federal budget, a good part of that going to smaller, more vulnerable regional organizations, as well as underserved communities. That’s hardly a hefty elitist handout as some claim - especially considering the much bigger subsidies granted to other business sectors - and hardly a cut significant enough to the bottom line to justify the loss of return on investment. The NEA functions as a critical component of and catalyst for a national arts system that hasn’t achieved its potential, yet. As of 2024 the NEA funding is 0.009% of U.S. GDP (contrasted with UK public arts funding of 0.46% - and a European average that is even higher). In time, the U.S. could catch up. And lead.
Arts funding is an easy target for the uninformed, just as arts programs in schools are shortsightedly the first to be cut in lean times, ignoring the reality that they have been documented to create innovation, confidence, teamwork, and timely product delivery. (The curtain is going up at 7:00 on Tuesday with 1,000 paying people watching, regardless.) A decade ago I was guest directing at Davidson College and when I asked one of the students (who didn't want a career in the arts) why she was majoring in theatre, she said she and her parents felt there was no sure thing in careers these days and knew the arts would prepare her for life and lots of potential jobs. I also remember another exchange initiated by a bank teller who had read the morning press about a play we were opening. She seemed excited about it, but when I asked her if she was coming to see it, she said (nicely), "No." Even when I offered her comps to see it for free she declined, saying she'd never developed an arts habit. "I think you have to 'get it' when you're a kid," she said. No kid - of any age - will “get it” if it isn’t available. That also goes for our stories - and our voices - in a cultural landscape stripped of personal expression.
It takes people with both visionary and practical thinking to leverage the unique benefits of the arts - cultural, financial and educational. I hope you are one of those, and as every business finds its way, I trust you will advocate for the assistance the NEA provides to this one, and by extension to all of us.
Steve Umberger
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A shorter version of that was sent to Senate and House reps for my districts. I didn't ask for a response but got one from Caleb Theodros' Senate office.
"While decisions regarding NEA funding are ultimately made at the federal level, Sen. Theodros understands how deeply such changes could impact local and state arts communities, including the organizations and economies you referenced. Although the Senator does not have a vote in federal appropriations, he believes strongly in the economic and cultural value of the arts, and he will continue advocating for robust state-level support."
Meanwhile, with the tea leaves read, all 10 Directors overseeing grants at the NEA resigned, along with senior staff members. And the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has announced it will shut down after funding was rescinded.
So in this reckoning the message seems clear: in whatever way you can, support what matters to you.
You can learn more about the facts and action on the websites for Americans for the Arts, and all your local arts and communications sources.
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About the pictures: at the top, these are some of those people no one ever sees in a live production, but it couldn't happen without them. Top row: production process in various stages, second and third rows: set models by designers and below them the finished sets on stage. Each one represents a process that involved dozens of people for many months. The designers are, left to right, James Pyne (King Lear, People's Light, PA), Mark Pirolo (Romeo and Juliet, NC Shakes), Joe Gardner (The Christians, Playworks at Blumenthal), Frank Ludwig (Over the Tavern, Riverside Theatre, FL). The bare bulb is a ghost light, a tradition for unoccupied theatres. This is what stages looks like more and more frequently these days.
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For context
General types of theatre production in the U.S.
Commercial theatre - generally refers to Broadway, off-Broadway, or any situation where production is capitalized and then must recoup its investment through its performance revenue. Everyone involved in production is compensated at professional standards, and the various unions for actors, directors, stagehands, etc. typically determine minimum salaries which may then be negotiated upward but not down. These terms also most often apply to the national tours of Broadway shows. (In recent years, because of the steep cost of professional production, there have been attempts to mount tours with non-union talent to reduce costs. While there are clearly many proficient non-union performers, these tours undercut the business standards of the professional workplace, and they are not sanctioned by the industry. The majority of tours are still signatory to all relevant unions.)
Nonprofit professional theatre - includes theatre companies in N.Y. and around the country that offer regular seasons of professionally-produced plays and events. The unions also determine salary minimums (usually lower than Broadway) for these theatres. Generally, someone is considered a theatre professional if they are a member of their particular union and are compensated at the standard set by that union. The majority of professional American theatres are in this category. (There are also a number of companies that are not signatory to the unions but who offer some compensation, usually at lower rates. These are often referred to as semi-professional companies.) "Nonprofit" is an official IRS designation that recognizes the organization as a charitable institution, exempting it from taxation because it offers cultural and educational benefits, and because the profit margin is extremely low.
Unlike commercial theatre, non-profit means no individual can "inure to the benefit" of the organization - i.e., profit disproportionately from it. The purpose of a nonprofit is to provide a pathway for the organization itself to endure. Many non-profit theatres have wisely used this structure to develop and test work that may have a wider audience, then transfer it to the professional arena where it may provide a revenue stream back to the non-profit. A Chorus Line and Hamilton are examples of this. Non-profits' revenues typically consist of ticket sales (including season subscriptions), education programs, special events, and investment income, but these theatres rarely cover more than 60% of their expenses from all that. The rest comes from grants and gifts. Also unlike commercial theatre, a seasonal company has the option to produce a variety of plays with varying attendance levels, balancing profit and loss over a number of shows, and from season to season. (A list of the leading U.S. regional theatres can be found at lort.org.)
Community theatre - refers to the many theatre organizations around the country where performers volunteer their services. They are also usually non-profit organizations. These theatres may have some paid administrative staff members but actors and crew members are typically unpaid. These theatres are not options for professional union-affiliated stage actors, since the union only sanctions work that is covered under a professional contract.
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