The Most Unkindest Cuts of All: America’s Defunding of the Arts
Friday 5/23/25, doors open at 5:00pm ET, interview starts at 5:30
Community Gathering on Zoom - register with the bright red reservation box to receive the Zoom link. These gatherings are a service for the theater community and are offered free for TRU members; we ask that non-members help keep us running by buying a ticket, making a donation or joining as a member.
In the room, three companies that have lost NEA funding: Tannis Kowalchuk, artistic director of Farm Arts Collective; Stephanie Prugh, director of development for The York Theatre Company; Bevin Ross, executive director of The Drama League. And for a broader persepctive, we welcome Tooshar Swain, director of Public Policy at Americans for the Arts. America has never been a leader when it comes to funding the arts, but today things have taken a more disturbing turn than ever. So many iconic institutions are suddenly under siege starting with a forced takeover of the Kennedy Center and now the defunding of NPR and PBS. What is hitting our theater community most directly, in this moment, is the neutering of the National Endowment for the Arts which is rabidly cutting funding to organizations that are not aligned "with the president's priorities." We'll consider what those priorities might be and how this effects individual artists and well as theater companies. At heart: why does art matter, and what is this administration afraid of? Is this a form of censorship, and how do they justify an apparent infringement of free speech? And ultimately what is being done – or can be done – to counter this attack?
