On Monday evening, 25 members of Congress — 19 Democrats, five Republicans and one independent — will take part in a good-humored tradition that brings politicians and theater people together for a worthy cause. In “Will on the Hill,” a Shakespeare Theatre Company annual fundraiser, the lawmakers get to ham it up, this year in an original (digital) riff on “Romeo and Juliet,” about a pair of congressional aides from opposing parties who fall in love.
Cute, right? Productive, no? So why am I not smiling?
Because this year, while the congresspeople are performing, legions of actors and other creative-economy workers across the country simply cannot. Not only that, this huge and vital sector — representing 5 million jobs and 4.5 percent of the U.S. economy, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis — is waiting desperately for the federal government to throw it a lifeline. Bills have been introduced, such as the valiant but long-shot “Save Our Stages” legislation by senators John Cornyn (R) of Texas and Amy Klobuchar (D) of Minnesota, which would give $10 billion in aid to venues forced by covid-19 to shut down.
The bill has 37 co-sponsors in the Senate and more than 100 in the House, according to Cornyn’s office. Yet no one is banking on legislation being passed, and certainly not before the election.
“I can’t believe the first priority is to make sure the arts are okay,” said Michael M. Kaiser, former president of the Kennedy Center and now chairman of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland. “At the national level, they are having trouble getting a bill together for the economy at large. I would love to be optimistic, but I’m not.”
To boost political pressure, the arts industry has been forming advocacy groups, such as Be an #ArtsHero. The brainchild of actors Brooke Ishibashi, Jenny Makholm and Carson Elrod, the group is pressing lawmakers for “Defend Arts Workers Now” legislation that would allocate grants to arts workers totaling $43.85 billion — relief, they argue, that is proportionate to the industry’s economic impact.
“What we’re doing is demanding consideration as an economic sector, just the same as other economic sectors,” Makholm said. “When you speak about the transportation sector, the financial sector, the tourism sector, we know what that means. We also know what it means when those sectors fail. And that each sector needs the others to succeed.”
Added Ishibashi: “When we talk about the arts and culture, we think of performing artists. But it’s all of the other jobs, too: animators, designers, visual artists, administrators, architects, stage crew members, custodians, customer service people, landscapers. It’s an entire ecosystem of jobs.”
One has to look only to such countries as Germany and the United Kingdom — whose governments have pledged $50 billion and $1.5 billion, respectively, in covid-19-related aid to the arts — to recognize a truism: that this country essentially pays its arts workers lip service. Sure, a few movie and recording stars make fortunes. But why do we treat rank-and-file employees in the arts industry like beggars? How many times have you been to a show where they resort to passing around a donation bucket?
“Any mayor in America is cognizant of how arts and culture is an economic boost for any community in the country,” said Narric Rome, vice president of government affairs and arts education for the advocacy group Americans for the Arts. Recently, he noted, a letter in support went out, signed by 204 local chambers of commerce, for another round of funding under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, the massive federal stimulus package that authorized the Paycheck Protection Program and other relief for American workers.
Still, even among members of Congress who recognize the tangible contributions of cultural endeavors, there’s an acknowledgment of the difficulty of the sell.
“I have to say it’s awkward to be talking about the importance of the arts when people are dying and people are being evicted,” Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), one of three senators participating in “Will on the Hill,” said in an interview. (The others are Christopher A. Coons [D-Del.] and Roger Wicker [R-Miss.].)
“But it does contribute in very concrete ways,” King continued. “Artists go to the grocery store and buy blue jeans like everybody else. It’s a significant part of the economy. We tend to think of it not as essential in terms of daily life, and yet we’ve learned during covid some break, some taking us out of our daily lives, is just crucial.”
On Monday, there will be lots of chortles at “Will on the Hill,” as a few professional actors join the politicos, and the government takes a break from not giving the arts the time of day.
Simon Godwin, Shakespeare Theatre’s artistic director, doesn’t share my view. “I am a big-tent kind of guy,” he said, when asked about staging the event at this perilous time. “For me, bringing them into the project, reminding them why theater and education matter so much, feels like a form of leverage. If it means one of those members of Congress feels something is brought more into focus, then it has done a service. My gut tells me change is only going to happen with consensus.”
None of the Republicans participating in “Will on the Hill” I reached out to returned my emails seeking comment — not Mississippi’s Wicker, whose home state has 25,000 arts and culture jobs, according to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA). And not Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona, where arts and culture pump $9.6 billion into the state annually, according to the NASAA.
Rep. Donna Shalala (D-Fla.) did respond. An ardent theater lover who performed walk-on roles in student productions as president of Hunter College and the University of Miami and as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, noted that the federal government made “deep investments in artists” during the Great Depression, through work-relief projects.
“We’ve got to help,” said Shalala, one of the original co-sponsors of the “Save Our Stages” bill. “They are workers and from my point view, essential to our civilization.”
