Our response to losing the NEA grant
On Friday evening, May 2, Theater Mu received notice that its $20,000 National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant for Fifty Boxes of Earth, which had its world premiere in March, was terminated because our production fell outside of "projects that reflect the nation's rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the president."
Minnesota's Asian American is unique to the US. We are 56% SE Asian, the majority of whom came to the US after as a result of the wars in SE Asia 50 years ago. Over 54% of our Asian American community identifies as immigrant or refugees. To leave out these stories is to leave out a rich and vital part of what makes our Minnesota so special.
No matter the funding or political landscape, Theater Mu will not censor itself, nor will we change our mission of creating great performances born of arts, equity, and justice from the heart of the Asian American experience.
Ankita Raturi’s Fifty Boxes of Earth wove theater, puppetry, and choreography together; challenged xenophobia and transphobia; and centered love and hope. This is the type of art we will continue to uphold and produce.
After Theater Mu’s $20,000 NEA grant was revoked, our partners at the Venturous Theater Fund, a fund of Tides Foundation, graciously stepped up with an additional $15,000 grant.
With your help, we can recover the final $5,000. Will you be the one to help us reach our goal?
The NEA's correspondence stated that it is shifting its funding priorities to projects that reflect the rich heritage and creativity of this nation. We encourage the NEA to talk to those of us who have been working in and have deep ties to our communities to ask what our needs are instead of imposing them upon us.
Theater Mu has spent the last five years “widening our circles” of representation to include more voices that have historically been marginalized. We will not ask them to now be silent. Instead, we raise our voices together, stronger, as a whole community working and creating art to build a tomorrow for us, our ancestors, and our future generations.
Theater Mu is also signing onto the following statement by the Professional Non-Profit Theater Coalition:
The withdrawal and cancellation of hundreds of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is appalling, and will cause serious damage to many arts organizations across the United States. The NEA was established by large bipartisan majorities in Congress, and gives grants to hundreds of counties in every state of the Union, in every congressional district. Those grants fuel an arts & culture industry that employs upwards of 5.4 million people, and contributes $1.2 trillion to our nation’s GDP.
This is an attempt to cripple the Endowment and its vital work, and laying the ground for the president’s declared aim of abolishing the NEA altogether, and with it the idea that the arts are a common good to be shared by all in our democracy.
We must object to and resist these cuts by all means at our disposal. We must protect the Endowment, whose existence is a vital marker for our country’s belief that the arts are a vital part of the nation.
If you would like to learn more, consider these articles: