Bringing the Bard to Baraboo

Once derided as a cultural "swamp," the NEA is now all about the best.

By William Beaman

From Reader's Digest

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It's not the sort of thing that happens in Waycross. Not in this hardscrabble rural community in southeast Georgia, snuggled against the Okefenokee Swamp. Not in one of the poorer places in the state, so remote that the nearest "cities" are named Sunnyside, Deenwood and Blackshear. But last October, in the auditorium at Ware Middle School, the curtain rose on a world-class performance of Romeo and Juliet. Onstage were actors from one of America's premier artistic companies, the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Almost no one in the audience had ever seen live professional theater or expected to have the chance, and to Dana Gioia, that was the beauty of it all.

As chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Gioia is embarked on a radical mission: He wants to celebrate truly great art by taking it on the road to neglected pockets of America. Art is not just for "a small intellectual elite," he says. "I want to bring the best art possible to the broadest audience possible."

Hold on. Is this the same NEA that so enraged lawmakers a decade ago that they nearly closed it down? The same federal agency that a Boston Globe columnist referred to as "Washington's most fetid cultural swamp"?

Indeed it is. "The great tragedy of the NEA," says Gioia, "is that, of all the grants across its entire history, people really know just three or four." That's because those few ignited a firestorm that smolders still. In the late 1980s, one NEA-backed artist submerged a crucifix in a jar of his own urine, while another took erotic photographs of men, including one of himself being penetrated by a bullwhip. In 1990, an NEA panel recommended a grant (later vetoed) for an artist whose onstage performance included smearing chocolate on her bare breasts.

Ever since, many people equate the NEA with taxpayer-funded filth. That's unfair, says Gioia, who stresses a far prouder legacy. Since its founding in 1965, the NEA has given out more than 120,000 grants to promote the fine arts. In communities across the country, you'll find theater, opera and ballet companies that exist solely because the agency gave seed money to start them up.

At the same time, Gioia believes that the NEA did veer off track, and he thinks he knows why. "Some works of art are better than others," the 53-year-old chairman says, "but the bizarre thing is that not all intellectuals believe that." He also thinks that the NEA became "obsessed with imagining that its purpose was to foster experimental art."

In laying out his own vision for the agency, he is far from subtle. For example, in a speech last year to the National Press Club in Washington, Gioia said that the NEA needs "programs of indisputable merit." The most ambitious of these efforts is "Shakespeare in American Communities." With NEA support, renowned theater companies are bringing the Bard not only to Waycross, but to over 150 small communities in all 50 states -- places like Paducah, Kentucky; Orono, Maine; Baraboo, Wisconsin; and Cerritos, California. No one disputes the merits of Shakespeare's work, nor the goal of staging his plays before new audiences starved for art.

To Gioia, it's about serving the public, not the insular arts community. He has personal reasons to feel passionate on this score. Though Gioia is a Stanford graduate and became a celebrated poet, he grew up in a rough working-class area just outside Los Angeles, and was the first in his family to attend college. "In my neighborhood there were no arts facilities," he says, "and I understand how difficult it is to bring art into those areas. I also know that those are the areas that need it most."

It's no surprise, then, that Shakespeare is not the only artist he is sending out on a cross-country tour. For 21 years now, the NEA has celebrated the living legends of a uniquely American art form with its "Jazz Masters" program, granting the honorees a fellowship award (now $25,000). Starting this year, the jazz greats will also travel to every state, performing concerts and holding workshops.

Gioia's boldest idea, though, has only recently been unveiled: "American Masterpieces: Three Centuries of Artistic Genius." This project will bring to hundreds of cities, thousands of schools and dozens of military bases "the masterpieces of American culture, from painting to modern dance, theater to jazz, classical music to literature," according to Gioia. Among the first tours: a repertoire of dance performed by the Martha Graham and Paul Taylor companies.

Artists -- a skeptical crowd, to be sure -- are now joining audiences in applauding Gioia's leadership. Acclaimed pianist Billy Taylor, himself a Jazz Master, says, "The arts have a very special place in Dana's heart. He's been able to do something his predecessors couldn't do. He has taken the politics out of it all."

Well, not entirely. There are those in Washington who still want to cut the agency's funding way back. But the chairman has the backing of the ultimate power couple.

At a news conference last January, First Lady Laura Bush announced that the President wants the largest annual budget increase for the NEA in 20 years -- $18 million, which would boost its total budget to nearly $140 million. In a city where funding is the true mark of clout, the NEA has arrived.

Still, to Gioia, a fatter budget is not the most satisfying kind of tribute. Another scene comes to mind instead. It's a classroom, back in Georgia, where the Shakespearean performers are talking to high school kids about theater -- the passion they feel for it, the hard work it requires. A boy's hand shoots up. He has an urgent question: "How do you tell your mom that you want to be an actor?"