Why Kamala Harris is the President the Theatre Community Needs
An OnStage Blog Editorial
“Stick To Theatre”
“Republicans Like Theatre Too”
“Why Do You Want to Turn Off Half Your Audience?”
These were common themes emailed to OnStage Blog in the Summer of 2020 when protests were engulfing the country following the death of George Floyd at the hands of the police. We published numerous editorials and social media posts supporting the protests and BIPOC rights in Theatre that Summer, and, we won’t lie, we lost followers on social media, and it hurt our traffic for several months.
We’d do it all over again because it was the right thing to do.
That brings us to this presidential election coming up.
Many blogs and websites are told to stick to their lanes, so to speak, when it comes to opining on politics and cultural issues. To a certain extent, we understand why: audiences are inundated with politics, and reading about political opinions can be exhausting, especially because politics has infiltrated so many aspects of our lives these days.
That’s one side of the equation.
The other side is that elections are too damn important to stay silent, as we are seeing newspapers such as The LA Times and The Washington Post elect to do this year.
They are probably making business decisions. It’s their right; we’re a free country.
Well, we were silent in print for the 2016 and 2020 elections. We are not staying silent now, even while many theatre publications are.
We don’t believe there is a lane to follow for theatre publications when presidential politics directly affect theatre and the people who love and perform in it. So yes, we’re going to use our platform to talk about what’s at stake for theatre with this presidential election.
So, let’s lay out what we know.
In 2018, Trump’s budget proposal called for the elimination of the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts). Trump called this year to abolish the Department of Education. He said, and we quote, at a rally this year: “I say it all the time, I’m dying to get back to do this. We will ultimately eliminate the federal Department of Education,”
The Department of Education funds a program called The Assistance For Arts In Education, which, among other things, implements three grant competitions for schools looking to support the arts. This is a big source of federal funding for arts programs, which a 2nd Trump Administration would look to eliminate.
That said (as we’re sure some of you are jumping to type out in the comments), much art education government funding is, of course, on a state level. Lately, however, states have been reducing (or, in Florida’s case, eliminating) funding for the arts.
If the federal government eliminates funding for the arts, you can bet more states will be emboldened to remove support as well.
Disagree? Well, we will surely find out what happens under a second Trump administration.
Secondly, Republicans, led by the current nominee, have advocated for diminished rights for LGBTQ citizens, particularly trans people who wish to play sports with people of their chosen gender (and it's already starting with high school theatre productions, too). Don’t forget Trump issued an executive order in 2017 called “Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty”, which reinforced the notion that federal law must respect conscientious objections to respecting LGBTQ rights.
Trump, of course, also uses defamatory language regarding immigrants and, by effect, BIPOC citizens, who, by the way, make up more of a Broadway audience than the population at large. Theatre is, as we know, a leading driver of LGBTQ and BIPOC representation in the culture. It is difficult to reconcile support for Trump and support for all of the LGBTQ and BIPOC communities, especially as a theatre nerd.
Yes, some Republicans like theatre, and yes, some BIPOC and LGBTQ theatre nerds are Trump supporters. But in 2024, given everything Trump has said and done over the last eight years, you can’t, in good faith, support the theatre and support the Republican Party led by Trump.
Some theatre nerds vote for Trump purely for tax reasons. The one thing Republicans can be counted on when they have the numbers in Congress and a Republican president is passing tax cuts. We won’t lie; we would love to have more money in our pockets, too (this fits in “our lane” as well). We’re also mad about inflation, which partisans will argue our ears bleed who is actually responsible for the massive inflation we experienced during the Biden administration.
But without getting into the reasons why a Republican administration typically results in higher costs and lower quality of life, tax cuts and promises to right-size inflation simply aren’t enough of a reason to vote for Trump for President in 2024, not when the well-being of so many of the people who drive the arts would be in question under a Trump Administration.
What drives theatre these days are stories told by and for underrepresented communities. We will always have rehashes of Guys and Dolls, The Music Man, and many musicals from the halcyon days of White America that Trump voters yearn for under any administration. They will never go away. What we need are more stories told by and about today’s America, and those stories will have less of a chance of happening under a second Trump administration.
But we are already sick of talking about Trump. Let’s talk about the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris.
Is she perfect? Heck no. Her record of throwing people from BIPOC communities in jail for minor offenses as a prosecutor is on record. Does she sound a lot like Sarah Palin at times, throwing incomprehensible word salads at audiences instead of cogent, well-thought-out statements on today’s policy issues? Yes, she does. Do we have any idea what a Harris administration would do on any issue, considering she is pledging to be way more moderate as President than she ever was as a Senator? No, no, we do not.
But a Harris Administration would be, without a doubt, friendlier to the arts and to the communities that perform and enjoy theatre than a second Trump Administration would be.
A Harris Administration will not propose cutting funding for the arts. A Harris Administration will fight for more rights for underrepresented communities whose life experiences are crucial to the modern-day theatre experience. A Harris Administration will stand up for the messages the theatre community stands up for every day: tolerance, love, joy, diverse representation, and justice. Sure, that last sentence was opinion, but if you watch a Harris rally and a Trump rally and come to a different conclusion, then stick to watching Fox News and stay in your alternate reality.
Simply put, a Harris administration will be more aligned with the values of the theatre community than a second Trump Administration would.
We’ve debated whether to issue an actual endorsement because we read this study with interest, showing that right-wing science-friendly audiences did not trust Nature magazine after it endorsed Joe Biden in 2020.
We decided that, frankly, an official endorsement from us doesn’t matter. You don’t need an endorsement from us to know who you, a theatre nerd, should vote for. And if you want to vote against theatre interests because of some other issue that directly affects you, go right ahead.
However, from everything presented above, the choice is clear: who will be better for the arts and for theatre.
Please choose accordingly.