With equal measures of amusement and alarm we noted news this past spring that the National Science Foundation had spent almost $700,000 to help produce a musical in Manhattan titled "The Great Immensity." The show, which New York Daily News reviewer Joe Dziemianowicz described as a "thoughtful but strained show about climate change," raised some eyebrows and hackles in Congress, in no small part because of its topic.
But perhaps even more controversial than the content is the question raised by federal underwriting: Since when does the U.S. Government pay for theater?
Answer: at least since the 1930s, when the Federal Theatre Project funded a number of productions to keep actors and directors employed. Shakespeare, Shaw and Sheridan were the most produced playwrights. Popular fare was mixed in with the classics, like the "modern version" of "Mikado" and a children's production of "Little Black Sambo."
A few new plays were specifically written in the enterprise, none of which have been seen for 70 years.
That's because, with few exceptions, theater made for the government -- any government -- is pretty bad. Dziemianowicz says the songs in "The Great Immensity," "whether about a doomed passenger pigeon or storm-wrecked towns -- feel shoehorned in and not, pardon the pun, organic."
The New York Times' Charles Isherwood liked the tunes, but chided the play's "somewhat preposterous conclusion" and speeches that "feel like sermons we've all heard many times."
The NSA awarded the big grant to a Brooklyn-based company known for what some call "investigative theater" and what others might call agitprop in 2010. That same year, Voices of the South, a Memphis, Tennessee, company, presented "Wild Legacy" in Anchorage.
That show was about Olaus and Mardy Murie, two naturalists who made a large impact on Alaska. It was part of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's 50th anniversary celebration of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A press release said the play was intended "to honor those who made possible the establishment of the Refuge."
USFWS' Maureen Clark declined to use the word "commissioned" in referring to the $45,000 in grants given to develop the production and bring it to Alaska.
"We were not seeking a play," she told me at the time. The Tennessee troupe simply responded to an open solicitation for grant ideas posted at grants.gov and got it, like anyone could have.
Maybe using scientific research or wildlife management money to produce plays is a wonderful thing. Every theater group in Alaska could certainly make use of $45,000, never mind $700,000.
But is it a good idea?
Theater's roots lie in religion -- the rites of Delphi, the morality plays in medieval cathedrals, the pageants performed by entire congregations and communities on holy days. Even the most bare-bones modern worship services possess a degree of histrionics.
Likewise, patrons attend well-done drama with a mood of spiritual awe. Theater folks regularly refer to the stage as "sacred space."
Both art and faith attempt to manifest unseen realities, whether theological or emotional. For some people there is no practical difference. But to an extent beyond music or visual art or dance, theater and literature "sell" ideas. They have an intrinsic proclivity toward propaganda.
Theater's subliminal power is that it can slip things past rational analysis by insinuating concepts via lively personalities that either attract or repulse us. We get wrapped up in the roles and whether or not we like the people they depict. Our attitudes are informed not by cool evaluation but by how we feel about the potent but imaginary characters.
One of the Federal Theatre Project's written-to-order scripts, Arthur Arent's "Power," used a cast of 100, a full orchestra, sarcasm, sentiment and speechifying to lambaste private utility companies over their opposition to the Tennessee Valley Authority. Billed as "a thrilling dramatization of modern industry," it was seen from coast to coast in 1937-38 -- then never seen again. Maybe it wasn't all that thrilling.
There are limits to the persuasiveness of both theatrical and ecclesiastic preaching. Sermons and drama can provide insights, but they seldom change hearts, at least not all at once. We typically approach both genres of expression seeking affirmation or illumination about something we already believe.
So should a government agency subsidize art with the explicit intention of cajoling public opinion? And who decides what play gets the public moolah?
Taxpayers grouse when the National Endowment for the Arts spends money -- a pittance compared to the NSF or USFWS budgets -- on productions of artistic masterworks ostensibly neutral in political content, like "The Glass Menagerie" or "La Boheme." They will predictably grouse more if their money goes to a message they oppose.
The NEA is charged with evaluating grant requests on the basis of artistic quality rather than where the recipient stands with regard to civic issues of the hour, and they seem to do it fairly well.
But if it's not done fairly, well, imagine your least favorite politician ensconced in office and spending public dollars to produce a play that promotes a project, policy or war that you find ill-advised or detestable. Are those hackles I see?
Everyone is more or less inclined to approve of propaganda that preaches their point of view. Most of us judge even sloppy messaging from our own side more leniently than we judge astute messaging from the other. Few want to hear from the other side at all.
And no one wants to pay for someone else's preacher.