The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has rejected the Tony & OBIE award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe’s (SFMT) 2018 grant proposal for $25,000. This comes after Breitbart News published an article last June entitled “Trump NEA Grants $20k for Lesbian Illegal Alien Musical” saying that NEA's funding of
"Walls" was "…a San Francisco musical about a criminal illegal alien lesbian with mental health issues who is in love with an immigration agent," which Breitbart News was using as a case made by President Trump for defunding the NEA entirely. Michael Gene Sullivan, Collective Member & Resident Playwright at the SFMT stated, “We do not know if this sudden evaporation of funds is a direct result of the relentless attacks on our friends at the NEA. We hope this will be a temporary circumstance & that their friends & supporters will contact their representatives to petition for a resumption of funding. If the only people in Congress who talk about free activist theatre are those who oppose it, then theatre of, by & for the people cannot survive.” Since 2012 the SFMT has received up to $20,000 from the NEA for each production which helps but is not enough to cover the cost of health insurance payments for its union members. The SFMT has been providing free Musical Political Theatre in the Bay Area Parks for 58 years. SFMT will continue to do so as well as continue its Youth Theater Project that educates SF youth on social justice & performance with their Young California Writers Project that provides an in-school activist playwriting workshop.
For More Info: sfmt.org
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