Temidayo Amay starred in National Queer Theater’s production of “Waafrika 123: A Queerly Scripted Tragic Rise to African Fantasia,” part of the 2024 Criminal Queerness Festival at PAC NYC. (Courtesy: Marion Aguas courtesy, National Queer Theater)
Adam Odsess-Rubin was not in a TGIF mood.
He waited at the Jay Street–MetroTech subway station in Brooklyn on Friday night, May 2. Even on the way to a birthday party, he couldn’t shake off the day’s tension. Odsess-Rubin, founder and artistic director of National Queer Theater, had spent the day with transgender youth who, like any theater kids, were anxious about their upcoming “Staging Pride” show. He’d also fielded emails, texts and calls about a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union against the National Endowment for the Arts, in which National Queer Theater and three other arts organizations are involved. The suit contested the provisions of Executive Order 14168 — signed by President Donald Trump on the day he took office — which prohibited the use of government funding for arts projects promoting “gender ideology.” Odsess-Rubin was also expecting separate but equally discouraging funding news: Trump had threatened to cut support for NEA grants already promised for 2025, and National Queer Theater had been promised such a grant for an event happening in June.
At 8:30 p.m., staring dejectedly at his phone, Odsess-Rubin received an email from the NEA with a “do-not-reply” return address. The letter read, in part: “The NEA is updating its grantmaking policy priorities to focus funding on projects that reflect the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President. … Your project, as noted below, unfortunately does not align with these priorities.”
The project was National Queer Theater’s annual Criminal Queerness Festival, featuring plays by LGBTQ+ writers from countries where queer identities are criminalized or censored. The festival, set for June 11-28 and about to begin rehearsals, had lost its $20,000 NEA grant.
According to the email, the NEA would “prioritize projects that elevate the Nation’s HBCUs and Hispanic Serving Institutions, celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, foster AI competency, empower houses of worship to serve communities, assist with disaster recovery, foster skilled trade jobs, make America healthy again, support the military and veterans, support Tribal communities, make the District of Columbia safe and beautiful, and support the economic development of Asian American communities.”
Odsess-Rubin called the letter’s language “brazen,” especially the part about the organization’s new priorities, and questioned why the email was sent on a Friday night when arts organizations, and journalists who cover them, wouldn’t likely be available to respond immediately.
“From a theater-making perspective, you can’t make this stuff up,” Odsess-Rubin said. “It feels like an absurdist comedy. This is not ‘The West Wing.’ This is ‘Veep.’”
Odsess-Rubin was one among several hundred leaders of arts organizations around the country who learned on the same Friday night that their NEA grants — funds approved but not yet allocated — would be rescinded. Arts organizations that lost NEA funding have compiled a spreadsheet to quantify the damage. Many arts nonprofit groups that operate with shoestring budgets rely on such federal funding for their programs. National Queer Theater has started a GoFundMe campaign to keep the Criminal Queerness Festival on track for 2025. But Odsess-Rubin is also worried about the future of cultural organizations like his that serve diverse communities, and larger questions about federal funding for the arts.
Executive Order 14168 mandated that the government recognize only two biological sexes and introduced the new federal funding requirement tied to gender ideology. Arts organizations voiced their confusion to the ACLU because it appeared that cultural programs about transgender or nonbinary communities would be ineligible for future NEA grant applications. On March 6, the ACLU alleged that the gender ideology restriction was unconstitutional under the First and Fifth amendments, in their lawsuit against the NEA, which listed Rhode Island Latino Arts, National Queer Theater, The Theater Offensive and the Theatre Communications Group as plaintiffs.
Emilya Cachapero, co-executive director of the Theatre Communications Group, said the organization got involved in the lawsuit so the outcome would benefit its more than 650 member theaters. “Advocacy is a huge part of our work,” said Cachapero. “This lawsuit aligns with our mission to bring together theaters across the country.”
From left, Janet Kilonzo, Kkuumba Siegell and Jha’Neal Blue starred in National Queer Theater’s production of “The Survival,” part of the 2024 Criminal Queerness Festival at PAC NYC. (Courtesy: Marion Aguas courtesy, National Queer Theater)
On April 3, the court denied the ACLU’s initial request to protect the plaintiffs from the new grant requirements for the duration of the lawsuit, even though the judge recognized that the NEA’s new policy likely violated the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedures Act. Lauren Yu, a lawyer and fellow at the ACLU who’s been involved in the case, said the judge’s ruling was “unusual” because “he agreed with us that the funding of these arts projects is not government speech,” while the NEA argued the opposite. “And because it’s not government speech,” Yu explained, “the government doesn’t have the ability to just mold it to whatever viewpoints they prefer.” The ruling came right before the application deadline for the next round of the NEA’s Grants for Arts Projects program. The plaintiffs remained uncertain about what to include in their next grant applications if the government still plans to deny funding based on gender ideology.
The NEA issued a statement on April 30 about its plan to implement Executive Order 14168, which reversed its position on gender ideology, but doubled down on the assertion that the grantmaking process is a form of government speech. Yu said the ACLU has doubts about the revised policy, and expects a judgment on the lawsuit’s merits later this year. “Government arts funding shouldn’t be to produce government propaganda,” Yu said. “The point is to celebrate the arts.”
While awaiting the lawsuit’s outcome, Odsess-Rubin now has to find a way to move forward with the Criminal Queerness Festival without NEA funds. “We’ve contracted about 40 queer artists in New York City and from around the world to participate in this festival,” he said. “We have tickets on sale.”
The festival debuted at WorldPride — a series of international LGBTQ+ pride events — in New York in 2019. For each of its previous three editions, the festival received NEA grants of $20,000. The NEA grant for this year represented 20% of the festival’s budget. Odsess-Rubin is determined to fight what he describes as the government’s “blatant violation of our freedom of speech and freedom of expression.”
Lauren Miller, a co-director of the HERE Arts Center, where the Criminal Queerness Festival will take place, said the event “couldn’t be more important” because “uplifting queer, trans and immigrant stories is key” at a time when Trump and his supporters are attempting to erase those identities.
HERE, too, received a Friday night email about losing NEA funding: $75,000 for HARP, an artist-residency program. Miller said HERE has submitted an appeal to the NEA challenging the funding cut. The appeal, Miller said, referred to the NEA’s stated priority for projects that “make America healthy again.” She submitted the “Arts and Health” page on the NEA’s own website, which says that “[t]he arts’ benefits for health and well-being are experienced at all stages of life and on multiple levels — physical, cognitive, social and emotional.” The NEA did not respond to a request to comment on the ACLU lawsuit or its reasons for rescinding grants for the Criminal Queerness Festival and other projects.
Miller, like Odsess-Rubin, was on her way to a fun Friday night out when she received notice of the NEA cuts. Walking to a puppet show called “The Puppet Ball” at The Brick theater in Brooklyn, she ran into another arts leader who told her to check her email (that person’s organization, too, had lost NEA funding).
When she stepped into the theater, Miller noticed that one of the show’s taglines was oddly foreboding: “Let us leave this wretched land and enter the night.”
About the author(s)
Jerry Elengical
Jerry Elengical is an Indian journalist and M.A. Arts & Culture candidate who has covered architecture, design, and digital art for STIRworld and Ecogradia.
Karen Lindell, a journalist from Southern California who has reported on arts and culture for more than 20 years for newspapers and magazines, is in the Master of Arts program at the Columbia Journalism School.