The movers and shakers of Capitol Hill are fixtures on the national stage. It’s rarer that they turn their attention to the nation’s theatrical stages, but that happened in early April, when theatre folk visited Congressional offices in Washington, D.C., as part of a two-day Theatre Communications Group event dubbed “Instruments of Civilization.”
The thespians came armed with talking points on six issues that TCG had recommended highlighting: support for the National Endowment for the Arts; support for arts education; improving the visa process for international guest artists; fixes to the way the tax system treats charitable giving; support for arts workers; and the need for legislation to combat predatory and deceptive ticketing activity. But one goal of the visits was to move past generalities to resonant specifics, and to deliver firsthand accounts of how the issues had affected individual theatres.
Such specifics came up when Alex Levy, artistic director of 1st Stage in Tysons, Va., and Erica Lauren Ortiz, an entrepreneur and theatre professional, met with a staffer for Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, for instance. At one point, Levy took the opportunity to explain that NEA funding had supported Wanda’s Way, Caleen Sinnette Jennings’s interview-based solo play about a Black woman police officer, which 1st Stage premiered in 2022. The Warner staffer took notes energetically.
After about 15 minutes, the appointment was over: Levy and Ortiz beelined out of the conference room to their next scheduled Congressional appointment.
“I was nervous, but it’s really inspiring to know that you can go and speak to leadership, to representatives,” and, moreover, “have a meaningful meeting,” Levy reflected later.
The Congressional barnstorming was the culmination of “Instruments of Civilization,” whose title borrowed from Zelda Fichandler’s eloquent metaphor about the enriching power of nonprofit theatre. Including governance roundtable sessions as well as the Capitol Hill visits, “Instruments of Civilization” was an answer to survey responses TCG had received from member theatres suggesting that it prioritize advocacy and create opportunities for expansive conversations about a variety of concerns.
“Instruments of Civilization” kicked off on April 9 with the governance sessions, held at D.C.’s GALA Hispanic Theatre. As additional people participated via Zoom, in-person attendees gathered in GALA’s performance space, where a stage strewn with ladders and what looked like stylized fruit trees testified to set building for the company’s Eva Perón-themed musical Momia en el clóset (Mummy in the Closet).
The conversation unfurled in a fishbowl-style format, with shifting configurations of attendees taking seats onstage to discuss issues facing the field. Major themes included how to communicate the value of theatre and how artists and leaders might take a long-game approach to ensuring the sector’s viability. Curtain times, season planning, audience demographics, outreach strategies, the pros and cons of the subscription model—these and other topics came up for discussion. Providing context, Corinna Schulenburg, TGC’s director of communications and research, presented data on long-term trends in subscriptions and marketing costs.
Afterward, Marissa Wolf, artistic director of Oregon’s Portland Center Stage, said she particularly appreciated how the day’s programming “put a lot of voices in the room” and enabled peer-to-peer sharing. “I find it really meaningful to zoom out from my own work and theatre to think more broadly about what’s going on across the field,” Wolf said.
Events on April 10 began at D.C.’s Arena Stage with training led by TCG’s director of advocacy, Laurie Baskin. Attendees received packets containing issue briefs, an at-a-glance document about the state of the theatre, bios of elected officials, itineraries, and maps of Capitol Hill.
In addition to discussing the nuances of the six issues, Baskin gave attendees a heads-up on what to expect in the halls of power: how to get from the House side of Capitol Hill to the Senate side (it’s walkable, if you have enough time), who would likely take the meetings (Congressional staff rather than elected lawmakers), and how long the meetings would be (brief). With the help of Ortiz, Schulenburg and Baskin role-played ways to talk to staffers.
The two-day event, which built upon TCG’s longstanding advocacy work, wasn’t the only theatre-championing push in town that week: The Professional Non-Profit Theater Coalition (PNPTC) had also designated time for talking up the Supporting Theater and the Arts to Galvanize the Economy (STAGE) Act of 2024, legislation introduced in the House and Senate to support the nonprofit theatre sector. Given these complementary advocacy efforts, TCG and the NPTC named the multi-day period “Theatre Week.”
Eugene Hutchins, managing director of East West Players in Los Angeles, stopped by Congress with a TCG team on April 10, then returned the next day with the PNPTC. The double-punch “was an opportunity to get in deeper” with crucial education and messaging on the needs of the field, he said later. An added plus: Wandering around sprawling Federal buildings is exercise. “I got my steps in,” Hutchins quips.
Wolf, too, was pleased with the Congressional visiting she did.
“I find it to be incredibly powerful and thrilling to come together with a direct line to our representatives around the critical need and urgency for funding for theatres,” she says. “Leading an institution right now can be so isolating—to navigate in such a profoundly difficult time. The opportunity to really stand up inside of advocacy for the entire field is, I think, an act of resilience and hope.”
Celia Wren (she her), a journalist based in Washington, D.C., is a former managing editor of this magazine.
