Skip to main content
Portland Playhouse’s 2024–25 season closer, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, opens tomorrow night. But less than 24 hours before curtain, the National Endowment for the Arts informed the theater company via a May 2 email that a $25,000 award to fund the production had been revoked. Staging August Wilson’s play, the email says, no longer aligns with President Donald Trump’s curatorial vision for the country.
“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,” the email begins. “Consequently, we are terminating awards that fall outside these new priorities.”
The email offers a rundown of the new NEA priorities, which range widely, from boosting Indigenous tribes and historically Black colleges and universities to disaster relief and training artists in the use of artificial intelligence. It concludes: “Your project, as noted below, unfortunately does not align with these priorities.”
Cassie Greer, Portland Playhouse’s interim marketing director, says there are no immediate plans to cancel Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, but that the loss of funds is an obvious setback. The award, issued in the final days of President Joe Biden’s administration, had never been finalized.
“Some of our colleagues who received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities have had their funding canceled in the past six weeks,” Greer wrote to WW, “and while we were aware that the NEA might soon be making similar moves, it had seemed like it was a much more ‘bulletproof’ entity...until this evening.”
“And while we could speculate about show content being the reason for funding withdrawal,” she added, “all we know at this point is what was communicated in that email from the NEA.”
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone—part of Wilson’s acclaimed Century Cycle series of plays documenting African American life—follows Herald Loomis’ search for his own identity, his family torn apart by post-Civil War racism, and a sense of belonging in a Pittsburgh workers’ boardinghouse in the 1910s. Angela Bassett originated the role of Loomis’ wife, Martha (the 2009 revival won two Tony Awards, among other accolades).
Oregon ArtsWatch reported earlier this week that Portland arts organizations were growing uneasy at the possibility that funding already awarded could be lost.
Brian Weaver, Portland Playhouse’s artistic director, tells WW via phone that the NEA’s award accounted for between 10% and 15% of the production’s budget. Portland Playhouse was recommended for funding in December under the Biden administration, with the award typically released in spring.
“The NEA staff is so good at their jobs,” Weaver says. “They’re always responsive, they’re navigating so many thousands of organizations across the country in a lengthy and complicated application process. There’s lots of very intricate details with applying for federal funding, they’re some of the most complicated applications to put in, and so I have a lot of sympathy for the staff of the NEA that has been trying, during these last tumultuous months, really working very hard to support all of their grantees across the country.”
After WW reported how Oregon Humanities, a Portland-based arts and culture council, lost more than $500,000 in April from a Department of Government Efficiency cut to the National Endowment for the Humanities, Weaver and Portland Playhouse’s staff suspected they could be on the chopping block, but had no idea they would lose their funding the night before curtains rise.
“This is money that we definitely don’t have sitting around,“ Weaver says. “At latest, we hoped we could get the funds midway through the production, but to get the cancellation notice the day before opening night is really demoralizing.”
Portland Playhouse’s first application for the NEA’s 2026 round of funding was paused and canceled in March once the agency’s funding priorities were rewritten. Though the company has applied for next year’s funding on Trump’s terms, the 2025 money lost was promised by Biden. Though Weaver has heard that other artistic entities in Oregon have lost NEA funding and says that Portland Playhouse would join them in a legal battle to get their money back, it’s a fight the playhouse is not equipped to lead.
“Certainly as a small arts nonprofit, we don’t have a legal team ready to take on the Trump administration, but I know that there are powerful interests coming together, it seems, to fight every move,” Weaver says. “We would happily join an effort.”