Join with A.C.T. to Save the
National Endowment for the Arts

In the White House’s proposed budget released on Thursday, March 19, funding for four independent cultural agencies are eliminated, including financing for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).

In the Bay Area, NEA grants support projects across theater, music, literature, dance, and museums. For American Conservatory Theater, this funding has enabled us to create works that bring to life the untold stories of San Francisco communities; most recently, The Orphan of Zhao, Stuck Elevator, Scorched, Monstress, and the World Premiere of A Thousand Splendid Suns. Thanks to NEA grants, diverse groups throughout the Bay Area—from Daly City’s Filipino American community to the Afghan American organizations in Fremont—have been able to see their stories, their communities, and their culture realized onstage.

But the NEA does so much more. It invests in a huge range of small community groups and highly diverse kinds of artistic expressions across America. It allows millions of Americans from every congressional district to express themselves through dance, theater, music and the visual arts, and it helps bind together cities and towns that might otherwise remain fractured and siloed. It funds regional councils, like the California Arts Council, that in turn support a wide variety of grassroots organizations. The NEA ensures that all Americans have some degree of access to self-expression, to beauty, and to a connection with their history and the national imagination.

As the grateful recipient of NEA support, we at A.C.T. strongly oppose these potential budget cuts. We believe that everyone—no matter what community they belong to, no matter where they live—should have access to the arts.

If we succeed in maintaining funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, we will preserve and enrich America’s cultural inheritance for generations to come. We at American Conservatory Theater encourage you, the audiences and artists of our community, to join us in urging Congress to vote against
these budget proposals.

To register your support, please contact your elected officials and share stories of how A.C.T. or other cultural organizations have made a positive impact on your community (see sidebar for more information).

Thank you for your support. Onwards and upwards with the arts!

Carey Perloff                                    Peter Pastreich
Artistic Director                                  Executive Director