“My moral-outrage meter just went sky high.”
That was Julie Crosby, producing artistic director of the Women’s Project today, after hearing that the National Endowment for the Arts—now with new leadership and swelling funds!—wouldn’t be funding the Women’s Project Playwrights Lab this year. (The NEA no longer funds general operating budgets; rather it underwrites specific projects.)
The amount at issue is a mere $20,000, but the impact of an NEA award goes far beyond its actual financial gift. Smaller foundations often look to the NEA as a “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval,” and so any NEA decision always has a profound ripple effect.
According to Crosby, the Women’s Project has received NEA support steadily in recent years, though it did lose its grant for 2007 after the departure of artistic director Loretta Greco, perhaps because there was then a common perception of the Project as a theater on the skids.
Crosby, who has presided over the theater’s resurgence, is still fuming. “This is taxpayer money, and yet they aren’t going to fund the oldest and largest theater for women in America?” The NEA’s new director Rocco Landesman has made it clear that he wants to reward excellence rather than “worthiness,” so perhaps the theater’s mission has worked (paradoxically) against it. It certainly seems baffling, though. If a string of good shows, passionate advocacy for women theater artists and a commitment to new writing can’t keep the NEA’s attention, what can?
I want to go out on a bit of a limb here and say two things:
1. It sucks that The Women’s Project lost its NEA funding. They are important and venerable and they do a range of interesting work.
2. Having spoken at length with panelists and staff members at the NEA over other applications for other theater groups, I am certain that there was another side to the story. It may have been an unjustified funding cut, but it also may have been a slapdash application, it may have been late, the DVD may not have played, they may have not turned in their final report from last year, etc.
I would just ask that someone in the journalistic community do due diligence and at least attempt to get a quote from the NEA as to why the funding fell through (especially in a year when the Endowment received an increase), before leaping to a conclusion that what caused the cut was politics alone.
Maybe the NEA is no longer supporting organizations that openly discriminate.
A Women’s Project in today’s theatre feels unnecessary and self-marginalizing. Dated.
Another side to this:
My female playwright friends outside NYC have found The Women’s Project completely inaccessible, downright hostile to non-NY women writers. One woman claimed she was not even invited inside the office when she dropped off a script in person while visiting NY.
Maybe this is just … karma.
Aaron is right, there are surely two sides to this–Helen, the folks at the NEA will happily talk to you, if you call–the contact info for the theater program is on their website. The NEA does not fund organizations, they fund projects. Organizations, no matter how worthy, still have to come up with compelling projects and submit compelling applications.
Sorry to disappoint some of the above commentators by stating some facts, but two of the last four new plays at Women’s Project were by women who live and write outside of New York City.
And to the question about need, is a theatre that promotes plays written and directed by women relevant? Just look at the stats on Broadway, and the need is clear.
“Moral Outrage” from the likes of Crosby is akin to “Social Consciousness” from Leona Helmsley.
It’s not discrimination to promote women at The Women’s Project when they are widely discriminated against in employment elsewhere, and at a horrendous rate. If your perception is that women have achieved parity then you need to do some homework. Numerous studies DEMONSTRATE that while there is parity in talent and numbers of qualified candidates, there is persistent extreme discrimination against women in employment. No theatre has been more open to untried talent, through its Lab and production, than the WP — HISTORICALLY. And if someone showed up at the door and wasn’t invited in, perhaps it was because that is inappropriate behavior. The staff is miniscule and workes 24/7. They don’t have TIME to welcome the univited. No other theatre would have treated the situation differently. Thanks to TIME OUT for giving a damn. Susan Jonas
If the NEA isn’t “funding organizations that openly discriminate” as Tom puts it, it should –as Marsha Norman suggests in American Theatre–immediately de-fund the vast majority of regional, Broadway and off-Broadway theatres for egregrious and ongoing discrimination against plays by women. 18%–come on people. Did all the black theatres get their funding cut too because they “openly discriminate”? Why is misogyny always the last thing to matter?
With all due respect to discrimination against women in the theatre in general.
As far as I know, it is not in any regional theatre’s msission statement to actively exclude women. That is a complicated rubric. And, ironically, the research shows women have played a complicit role in perpetuating that reality.
But when you have an organization that states clearly in its title and mission statement that 49% of the population is not welcome to work there, I don’t think public funds are appropriate.
“49% of the population is not welcome to work there”? Define work. They produce plays that have men and women in them, they have male staff members. They simply produce plays written by women. It’s not a complicated rubric. What about a regional theatre that only produces classics? They discriminate against 100% of living playwrights. And besides, that’s not why the NEA is de-funding them. I wonder if it has to do with the shifting of priorities away from NYC, which Rocco Landesman has alluded to (or at least has been inferred).
This might be the beginning of a trend. In fact, I hope that it is, because if this is the only NY theatre that’s seeing its funding slashed…well, that’s pretty awful.
Tom’s points only make sense if the NEA has also slashed funds to the National Asian-American Repertory Company, Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre Company, Kuntu Repertory Theatre, and all regional playwright programs like, say, the Southern Writers’ Project. Fact is, plenty of theatres in their mission statements privilege ethnic groups, religions, races, ages… it’s not something invented by women. Naturally, only women draw the ire.
Of course, plenty of men work at the Women’s Project. Has Tom ever seen a play there? Seriously, any arts group can privilege work created by a particular group. It’s not even limited to theatre.
The NEA does not guarantee funding year to year just because there is precedent. Their requirements are strict, rigorous and clear, and their decisions sometimes opaque. But simply because this theater was denied funding does not mean the Time Out audience should assume they are a victim. Not all theaters get annual funding, and there is every possiblility that if WPP does good work this year and writes a good application that they’ll get it back next year.
There are plenty of other women playwrights groups that that are “worthy” of NEA funding but don’t get it. Women’s’ Project has been the token women’s theater group for too many years. Maybe its time for them to get off their laurels.
Just because Women’s Project has been, as Terrence suggests, “the token women’s theater group for too many years,” it doesn’t make their mission or their work any less relevant, and therefore, no longer in need of financial assistance. The reason WP has been able to become a prominent figure on the women’s theatre circut is because it has consistenly produced new and provocative works by women with the help of- you guessed it- funding from organizations like the NEA. You want to see more women’s work produced? You need more, consitent funding for it- no matter what organization you’re with. In case you haven’t heard, nothing in this world is free– unless you’re rolling in millions, and in which case, it might behoove you to throw some down to organizations like Women’s Project.
Susan Jonas has already clearly stated what I would have; with this exception:
“Women’s’ Project has been the token women’s theater group for too many years. Maybe its time for them to get off their laurels”
Perhaps I should walk over to The Public Theater and tell them to stop taking the NYSF so seriously since they are the token Shakespearean theater in NYC. Seriously. I’m not sure if one could make a more ignorant comment.
The thing to understand about the NEA is that funding is competitive. In other words, all theaters are competing for limited resources.
If the Women’s Project wasn’t funded, it’s because there were better, stronger, more appropriate proposals from other theaters. Not because the Women’s Project is a bad organization.
That said, it’s probably not a good idea for the artistic director to be blasting the NEA in the media. It’s never a good idea to bite the hand that feeds you, or might feed you again. They should take the rejection with grace, and come back with a killer proposal next year.