June 12, 2025
LETTER TO SENATE AND HOUSE REPRESENTATIVES ABOUT THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS
“It’s never been as dire as it is now."
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.” And, artist or not, arts supporter or not, that vision encompasses the shared history of how we all came to be Americans, nationally and regionally.
The NEA serves the entire country. 40% of the budget is awarded directly to the states to distribute through their programs, and the other 60% goes to those who apply for grants through the NEA itself. The money is not intended as a handout; it's development funding that is 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." From NASAA stats: "Every $1 the NEA invests in grants leverages $9 in local and private matches.” It supports the work of writers, painters, sculptors, musicians, actors, dancers, designers, directors, architects, folk artists, teachers, artists-in-residence, and the administrators of the arts - all those who tell and interpret our stories; the record of how we’ve thrived or at least lived on the planet.
The arts are by nature subjective; that’s their job and it's what gives them their unique power and value. It's also what draws debate; because it is subjective, it cannot and should not always please or even appeal to everyone. We’ll never agree on everything. The craft and strength of the arts are in their capacity to explore all perspectives, and to create forms of expressing ideas about them. The product is not from a factory but from a personal impulse or experience you may or may not share or even understand - though even if you don’t, it can still have the ability to engage you. But regardless of motive or content, it is a product, created as professionally as any on an assembly line, and it's a proven sector of the economy.
Many people have only the vaguest idea of how the arts are made. It's seldom simple and requires time, skill, patience, 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 frequently 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 one hour of one project, and a process that often takes a year or more and sometimes hundreds of people through conception, design, and execution. (This business is glamorous about 5% of the time, and mainly to those who aren't in it.) Seeing a finished 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.” A single professional theatre production at the regional, nonprofit level costs, minimally, $200,000. On Broadway, non musicals are capitalized at $3 to 5 million each, and musicals at $10 to 20 million - all standard for good and services at those levels of production.
The need for an alternative to the volatile commercial arts world is what originally drove the regional movement that the NEA has had a strong presence in supporting. Professional non profit regional theatres, for example, developed all over the country in the 40'a and 50's 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. By the 80's these companies were in virtually every major and mid-size market in the country, with the help of the NEA and local agencies, bringing the potential for a new kind of producing path and an R&D lab for playmakers. It's happened in every discipline. In an interview, 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.”
But it’s not an easy solution. I spent 40+ years in the non-profit arts world and this I can say: there is seldom an ounce of fat on that bottom line. Non profits typically derive a maximum of 60% of their budget from the earned income category. The equation for survival is an ever-shifting balance of sales, special events, education programs, investment income, grants and gifts. That equation has already been badly 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 post-Covid period, Broadway had its best financial year ever this year, but attendance itself didn't set that record, sales receipts did, driven by stars who took time to help the cause by appearing in shows and drawing audiences - ones willing to pay whopping new single ticket prices of $900+ to see them. But that also carries the potential consequences of making the work dependent on a few and inaccessible for a great many. Not a permanent or reliable fix.
As commercial producing costs have skyrocketed, we've seen the models that built that alternative movement wobble, becoming obsolete in the wake of recessions, disasters, shifting demographics, and endless new entertainment choices. Some nonprofits have survived and even thrived, but for most the waves of change have come faster and higher than these infrastructure-heavy companies can absorb. Drastic staff and program reductions are the norm today, and closings of once healthy decades-old companies are routine. A friend who works at one of those well-established theatres in the midWest 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, but with such a sudden pull of the funding plug, many may never have the chance they were promised to find out.
Losing the regional 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 doorway 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 refined at multiple nonprofits before landing on Broadway. That kind of jackpot success is too capricious to ever be a given or a goal, but the odds for quality improve with the focused development time at lower producing costs nonprofits can provide.
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 weak philosophical point but they will have deeper negative effects on economies (arts and related sectors
If we are in a debate about the validity of the NEA and public funding for the arts, which is a fair conversation to have, that should happen hand in hand with an awareness of the facts and the implications, and a concurrent, reasonable 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 person, 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 billions in subsidies given to other U.S. sectors - and hardly a cut significant enough to the bottom line to justify the loss of return on investment.
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 their components have been documented to create innovation, independence, confidence, determination, teamwork, and timely product delivery (that curtain is going up at 7:00 on Tuesday with 1,000 paying people watching, regardless). Some years ago I was guest directing at Davidson College and when I asked one of the students (who actually 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. It will be hard if not impossible for kids of any age to “get it” if it isn’t available.
It takes people with visionary thinking to leverage the unique advantages of the arts - cultural, financial and educational. I hope you are one of those people, 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.
***
I didn't ask for a response to the letter but got one from Caleb Theodros' Senate office. Part of it:
"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.
So in this reckoning, the message seems clear: in whatever way you can, support what matters to you. That's the new world.
***
About the pictures above: 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 & 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 the stage looks like before and after a production has used it…or not used it. The painting below by Thomas Hart Benton is another example of what you see in a finished form, surrounded by what it takes to finish it.
Contact: info@playworksonline.org
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