TO: Mayor Rick Mystrom
Municipality of Anchorage
WWMAYOR@ci.anchorage.ak.us

FROM: Professor Jill Dolan, President
Association for Theatre in Higher Education
jdolan@email.gc.cuny.edu

RE: Budget Vote

CC: Anchorage Assembly Members

24 November 1997

I am writing in my capacity as President of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, because our 2,000-member national professional organization is dedicated to advocating for theatre practice wherever it is threatened around the country. We believe in the vital important of freedom of expression in the arts, as well as the necessity for national, state, and municipal governments to fund theatre and other performing arts.

I encourage you to veto the budget on the table for tomorrow's vote in Anchorage, which includes a punitive cut in funding for the Out North Theatre Company that was passed by the Assembly. Out North is apparently being punished by Assembly members who object to an illustration used on some of the theatre's promotional material, and who also object to a performance called MY LEFT BREAST. The Assembly's 6-5 vote overrides the recommendation of the Anchorage Arts Commission, which vetted and approved Out North's original $22,000 of funding.

I urge you not to be swayed by superficial arguments that judge art projects on the basis of simplistic understandings and narrowly drawn notions of family values. Susan Miller's performance piece, MY LEFT BREAST, is an honest, important exploration of the ravages of breast cancer. Surely, given our nation's increased awareness of this disease in recent years, Miller's play is worthy of attention from all of us. To disparage a theatre piece simply because it has the word "breast" in the title returns Anchorage's Assembly to the trivialities of the schoolyard and pre-pubescents' insecurities over sexual anatomy--hardly a distinction for a governing body of a U.S. city.

To make arts funding decisions based on partisan, dogmatic understandings of family values is antithetical to the free exchange of ideas through artistic practices. I sincerely hope that you will encourage your Assembly members to bring a new budget proposal to a vote, one that will refund Out North and allow the recommendations of your own Arts Commission to stand.

Thanks for your reasonable reconsideration of this unfortunate situation.