Sia, the Australian pop star whose songs are featured in the jukebox musicals Moulin Rouge! and Hell’s Kitchen, is developing a theater score of her own.
The singer-songwriter behind “Chandelier” is writing music and lyrics for an off-Broadway adaptation of the 2017 independent movie Saturday Church. Damon Cardasis, who wrote and directed the critically acclaimed story about a gay teenager’s difficult coming of age, is collaborating on the musical’s book with the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames (Fat Ham).
New York Theatre Workshop was awarded $50,000 by the National Endowment for the Arts to support the development and production of Saturday Church, according to the NEA. In the film, a shy, gender-fluid New York teen (Luka Kain), struggles to find acceptance at school and at home. The 80-minute movie features original songs by Nathan Larson and Cardasis.
Whether the nonprofit company ultimately collects the grant is unclear. With new restrictions on NEA funding, the Trump administration has made government policy of the very intolerance depicted in the movie.
After complaining about drag shows at the Kennedy Center, Trump installed himself as chairman of the performing arts complex. He signed an executive order demonizing the diversity, equity and inclusion programs adopted at New York Theatre Workshop and other nonprofit theater companies. The president also signed an executive order stating that the policy of the United States is “to recognize two sexes, male and female” — despite overwhelming evidence of chromosomal combinations showing the fluidity of sex determination beyond the binary.
The NEA now requires that grant applicants certify that they won’t “operate any programs promoting ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws.” And the NEA requires that any “applicant understands that federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology,” per the NEA’s website.
More than 400 artists have protested the new requirements. “Artists are not primarily in the business of promoting ideology,” they wrote to the NEA. “We are compelled to tell our truths, to create community around the stories that give life to those truths, and to make common cause with others while we share this time on earth.”
In a webinar on Tuesday, Michelle Hoffmann, the agency’s director of arts education, noted widespread “confusion and concern” about the restrictions but she didn’t offer much clarity or reassurance. “In accordance with the president’s executive order, the NEA will not fund projects that include DEI activity,” Hoffmann said on the webinar. “Applicants must certify that they do not operate any programs promoting DEI that violate Federal anti-discrimination laws, including programs outside the scope of their NEA project.”
The 1965 legislation that President Lyndon Johnson signed creating the NEA struck a different tone. It noted that the “arts and the humanities belong to all the people of the United States.” The arts reflect Americans’ “mutual respect for the diverse beliefs and values of all persons and groups.” Education should provide the background to appreciate “the diversity of excellence that comprises our cultural heritage, and artistic and scholarly expression.”
Jason Baruch, of the entertainment law firm Sendroff & Baruch, wrote in an email to Broadway Journal that while he isn’t an expert on how to legally resist the executive orders, “I fully expect, and dearly hope for, a litany of robust legal challenges to be raised.”
Ronald Shechtman, a theater lawyer with Pryor Cashman and former managing partner of the firm, noted that while the legislation forming the NEA doesn’t explicitly reference DEI, “there are legal arguments based on provisions of the enabling statute, as well as the current prohibition of DEI activity, that are serious.”
The NEA has subsidized the development of numerous Tony Award winners. Past grantees include the Atlantic Theater Co. for developing The Band’s Visit ($35,000); Playwrights’ Horizons for A Strange Loop ($45,000); Second Stage Theater for Next to Normal ($35,000); and Lincoln Center Theater for Oslo ($50,000), War Horse ($100,000) and South Pacific ($75,000). NEA-funded Pulitzer winners include Manhattan Theatre Club for Cost of Living ($35,000) and MTC’s co-production with Chicago’s Goodman Theatre of Ruined ($40,000).
A spokesman for New York Theatre Workshop — which developed Rent, Hadestown and other Broadway-bound musicals — said the company declined to comment for this story. Losing a $50,000 grant wouldn’t capsize an off-Broadway musical, which typically has a budget in the seven figures. And at least one company is already fundraising off the restrictions.
Under the subject line “We Will Not Comply,” Primary Stages Artistic Director Erin Daley called Trump’s executive orders “deeply troubling” and noted that her company won a $20,000 NEA grant to present Chisa Hutchinson’s play Amerikin. It’s scheduled to begin previews March 1.
“I don’t know if these funds will be delayed, restricted or denied altogether,” Daley wrote in the fundraising email. “What I DO know is that we will NOT compromise our core values for Amerikin or any future Primary Stages project.”
