News wrangling + time capsule from 10 years ago ⏳

Woof, with so much news flooding the pipelines this week, I know I'm not alone in feeling just a mite overwhelmed. As a result, I'm going to share a half-dozen things I read on the internet this week that made me laugh, gave me a deeper understanding, or had me feeling a bit better, encouraged for our field.

The single most helpful thing I read all week was Philip Kennicott's article in the Washington Post, How Trump’s Kennedy Center takeover could change the arts, which is broader than the title implies. Kennicott explores how changes to the tax code could influence the art world, and raises this million dollar question: "What if this isn’t about DEI but is rather a wholesale attack on the nonprofit world, with the aim of crippling or silencing groups that have traditionally been independent of government coercion?" Click on that gift link to get a sense of the stakes.

Halftime show - "Not Like Us—And Never Will Be"

Dancer / writer / scholar Dr. Gregory King provided an analysis of Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl halftime show (which was less than a week ago!) that illuminated some of the many layers at work in the mass viewing event. King calls Not Like Us "the anthem of resistance." He goes on, "more than a song; it was a manifesto. It was Kendrick drawing the line between those who are culture and those who consume it. Those who create, and those who exploit. ... It was about the machine that turns Black bodies into currency while dictating what Blackness should be. Kendrick called them out with every drumbeat, with every line, with every dancer moving in defiance." The whole piece is written in a straightforward, direct tone, accessible, clear, and well worth a few minutes of your time.

Do you need to watch the show again? You might!

A statement! From an arts organization!

FringeArts put out a fairly noncontroversial statement of values and mission, written by CEO and Producing Director Nell Bang-Jensen.

This is my favorite part (emphasis in the original):

At FringeArts, we will be doubling down on our commitment to supporting and centering all artists, with a particular focus towards artists of marginalized identities. We enthusiastically support a diverse, inclusive, and equitable arts community and are especially proud to be a welcoming home for trans, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming artists.

What a lovely statement from an organization that has indeed been doing that work, and doubling down instead of backing away. Sensible! Necessary!

I'm glad to see this from Fringe, but have been dismayed by how rare this kind of thing is at the moment. Do you have other examples of arts organizations publicly doubling down? Can you send any of them over this way?

Board presidents have to work

Beloved online humorist R. Eric Thomas had me cackling with his take on Trump's takeover of the Kennedy Center in his own weekly newsletter:

This Kennedy Center thing is as close as we're going to get to gay villainy. Wanting to be incredibly involved in a theater's season planning? Paging Jafar!

Baby, running a non-profit board is a full-time job! You have to wear chunky statement necklaces and have long meetings on Zoom about the budget and harangue all of your wealthy friends to buy tickets to the reading of a brand new musical about tardigrades (but the tardigrade is a metaphor).

Post writer Kennicott made a similar point in a different excellent article on the change in leadership: board chairs usually do a lot of heavy lifting with fundraising. The Kennedy Center got $95 million in donations last year. It's hard to imagine the newly-installed chair doing that work, or any work in the arts really.

On a happier note, if you aren't currently subscribed to Thomas' newsletter, it's an easy way to add more joy to your inbox.

Changes at the NEA

If you were like me hoovering up any hot takes about what's going down at the National Endowment for the Arts, there were a few to choose from, but American Theatre magazine hones in on what seems like the most dangerous elements to me. The updated requirements for the Grants for Arts funding opportunity includes:

• The applicant will not operate any programs promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws, in accordance with Executive Order No. 14173.
• The applicant understands that federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology, pursuant to Executive Order No. 14168, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.

Since applicants pretty much at least had to pay lip service to some kind of diversity in previous applications in order to be competitive, the whiplash is pretty intense. And the language just makes my skin crawl. I don't know any arts organization that heavily relies on federal funding because it's such a small slice of pie, so I'd like to think it will be relatively easy to avoid throwing trans artists under the bus and reversing years of doing the work to make our organizations more accessible and equitable. We don't need crumbs that come at such an extraordinarily high price.

Anyway, if you need a good summary of the full slate of changes and their context, I'd recommend hopping over to the American Theatre link. And if you'd like to sign on to an open letter to the NEA asking them to change direction and not comply with the recent executive orders, you can do so here, but do it quickly as I believe the deadline to add your signature is Monday, February 17.

Drag in the streets

There was a protest outside the Kennedy Center on Thursday night and the Washington Blade has some good coverage of the event.

I love this quote from my former colleague John Borstel:

We’ve got drag queens speaking out. The bureaucrats won’t speak up. I have never been prouder than I am tonight, to be a gay man, to be queer, because it’s the queers who have come out to protest it — but it’s affecting everybody. ... He’s going to cut it all down. Everybody should be out here. I worked in the arts sector for over 30 years here. Where are those folks? But the queers are here. And they’re dancing!

I think we're going to need some more of these queer dance party protests...

Sisterly Affection (a bit of Philadelphia appreciation)

I've been going through old papers and folders trying to winnow down the amount of stuff I'm holding onto. I have an absurd amount of old programs and sometime next month I am going to semi-ruthlessly get rid of at least 25% of them. (If you'd like to share your own calculus for what you keep and what you throw away, especially around programs, I'd love to hear it!) But all of these will be in the 'keep' pile. Please enjoy this little slice of Philadelphia performance history, circa 2015.