South Coast Repertory loses $20k grant after NEA changes priorities

South Coast Repertory announced Tuesday it lost a $20,000 federal grant for a play on the day the theater company was celebrating its opening night due to a change in the National Endowment for the Arts’ grant-making priorities.

The Costa Mesa-based theater company was notified Friday that its National Endowment for the Arts grant for “The Staircase” by Noa Gardner was being withdrawn.

The grant did not finance the entire production, South Coast Repertory Managing Director Suzanne Appel told City News Service.

But the grant “supports quite a lot of the work of the skilled technicians,” who work on the production, she said.

The $20,000 “is not anywhere close to the full cost of the project or even a tenth of the full cost, but it is a meaningful amount of money,” Appel said.

The company was told Nov. 7 it would receive the grant.

“We were told we did everything we needed to do and the grant was in process, and then we received this notification with no warning,” Appel said.

South Coast Repertory has been given a chance to appeal the denial in a week, Appel said, adding the theater company intends to appeal the denial.

In the notice of withdrawal of the grant, the theater company was told that the arts agency was “updating its grant-making priorities to focus funding on projects that reflect the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the president.
Consequently, we are terminating awards that fall outside these new priorities.

“The NEA will now prioritize projects that elevate the nation’s (historically Black colleges and universities) and Hispanic Serving Institutions, celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, foster AI competency, empower houses of worship to service communities, assist with disaster recovery, foster skilled trade jobs, make America healthy again, support the military and veterans, support Tribal communities, make the District of Columbia safe and beautiful, and support the economic development of Asian American communities. Funding is being allocated in a new direction in furtherance of the administration’s agenda.”

Gardner’s story focuses on a native Hawaiian family and was commissioned, developed and staged by South Coast Repertory.

South Coast Repertory officials say it celebrates native Hawaiian culture and is a “universal story of familial love and obligations that in its specific authenticity, describes a deeply human experience.”

South Coast Repertory theater company in Costa Mesa.

(South Coast Repertory)