Floridian Theatremakers Fight Back Against State and Local Governments in Arts Funding Battle

In 2025, political ideals clashed with the arts across the United States. The overhaul of the Kennedy Center was just one of several battles. Unfortunately, the blueprint of incoming change has emerged from none other than the Sunshine State, Florida. As a born and raised Floridian theatremaker, I’ve seen Florida make headlines in ideological battles for my whole life. Floridian artists live in a unique ecosystem of political polarization, the climate crisis, a constantly growing population, and a rich state history. It’s a great state to live in if you’re an artist wanting to make a statement, but you have to be ready to fight for it. Living in areas of the state with frequent fights for the arts, Central Florida and Northeast Florida, has taught me that art is precious enough to fight for.

Stifling the arts by cutting off funding and attempt to bleed institutions dry isn’t new, but its laser-sharp focus in state and local government feels increasingly significant. The cuts are both statewide and, more recently, hitting local county and city councils.

The theatre has always been an impactful, safe, and sacred space to challenge ideals, spark conversation, and facilitate healthy discourse and debate.

Governor Ron DeSantis made national headlines in June 2024 when he vetoed over $32 million of arts and culture funding in the state of Florida. Since 2014, the state budget allocated tens of millions of dollars annually to theatres, museums, and other arts and culture organizations. Many of them have come to rely on this funding, especially those with prior and positive grant history with the state.

Like many artists, you may be thinking, “Why would they have made a cut to such valuable funds?” Some used economics to defend the choice, arguing the money may be better utilized elsewhere. However, others were quick to bring up that what’s typically allocated for arts and culture is less than 1 percent of the entire state budget. Surely, there must be a valid reason for such a historic and impactful change to the greater cultural landscape of Florida.

In a press conference, DeSantis revealed these cuts were due to Orlando and Tampa Fringe Festivals being “sexual festivals” that were an “inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars.” Fringe leaders responded with a letter to the governor, asserting that while there is some adult content at the festivals, it is chosen by lottery, not curated by event staff, and is also rated appropriately. This letter ended with an invitation to DeSantis to attend the festivals. It’s worth noting that these fringe festivals alone drive millions of dollars into local businesses each year.

Let’s briefly set aside the argument of what is “appropriate” to ask: Why punish an entire industry for actions of two organizations? It’s illogical. It’s not good governance. Instead, I see it as a blueprint. A test run. This will be important later.

Once the blueprint was created, Florida reversed course for the following fiscal year, approving $18 million in grant funding for arts endeavors that the state deemed “appropriate for all ages”. They also tightened the grant application scoring process, making it harder to receive grant funding.

To understand how these events impacted my community of Northeast Florida, I spoke with Bradley Akers, managing director of Jacksonville-based Players by the Sea. He said, “The veto of 2024–25 funding created a cyclone of confusion and fear about how the 2025–26 grant cycle would unfold… What I did not prepare for, however (and perhaps naively), was a complete loss of funding.”

Many arts organizations statewide felt this shock. A constantly shifting financial landscape for the arts became status quo. He continued,

During legislative session, it was determined that applications receiving a 95 or higher would be eligible for 2025-26 funding, with small proviso allocations for organizations scoring between an 80–94.9 after several rounds of negotiation. Proviso funding would be allocated to organizations recommended to and selected by the Florida Secretary of State.

Players by the Sea scored a 94.5 on its 2025-26 grant application and was not considered in the list of proviso funding.

Worrisome, too, is the stipulation that the content grantees make must be “family-friendly.” For the arts especially, this is quite a subjective criterion. “A colleague of mine challenged the semantics of this directive in a scenario that has stuck with me,” Akers said.

She posed a scenario [of] a museum presenting an educational and transparent Holocaust exhibit to young students and using grant funds to aid in the transportation and field trip logistics. Students seeing what happened during the Holocaust isn’t necessarily “age appropriate” by standard definitions, but is a critical part of their education… Would this be considered eligible for grant funding or a violation of grant funding?

Reader, you may be thinking that this is an extreme example. Please remember that we live in Florida, a state where the education department has literally made it harder to teach about the Holocaust.

Akers left me with a thought that tapped into the exact reason this is happening:

Our work as theatremakers and storytellers has once again reached an uncomfortable urgency. The theatre has always been an impactful, safe, and sacred space to challenge ideals, spark conversation, and facilitate healthy discourse and debate. Our medium and mode of delivery is unique: it’s visceral, it’s intimate, it’s designed for stories to share the same air as those witnessing it.

Theatre is powerful and change-making. Those who would avoid change would rather cut it off at the source.

When the deck seems stacked against Floridian theatremakers, and we are constantly thrown curveballs, what do we do? 

Remember when I said the state of Florida likes to be the one to lay the blueprint? Yes, this is true nationally, but also for its smaller city councils and other elected boards. Unfortunately, my old stomping grounds of Volusia County felt inspired by this statewide action.

In October 2025, the Volusia County Council vetoed over $600,000 in arts funding for local organizations because of events at two theatres (one of which was a third-party event) that were inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community. It’s the exact same playbook the state used, and the ideals used to defend such an erroneous choice were the same.

When this news broke, Shoestring Theatre and the Athens Theatre—the two organizations at the center of it all—immediately rescinded their grant applications in solidarity with the thirty-one remaining applicants. They hoped the county would fund those other applicants, but a vote to award funds failed 4–3, stripping funding from the African American Museum of the Arts and the DeLand Naval Air Station Museum, among others. Council members on the winning side of that vote cited infrastructure and local businesses that needed the money more.

I connected with a dear friend of mine, Shoestring Theatre president Lori Lemoine. She and Shoestring Theatre found themselves in a whirlwind of politicization and weaponization of arts funding instead of being able to focus on the great work they do for the Lake Helen community. If you know Lori, you know she’s going to have something to say:

I was not surprised. The council had been looking to defund these grants for the past two years, and every time we had all showed up to fight… While I think Shoestring and the Athens will both be fine, there are about nine organizations that really count on this funding to be able to provide services for our local citizens that may not be here next year. The argument was that they [the county government] were providing a charitable donation, but, in fact, the partnership between the county and the local arts groups has always benefited both of us. Every dollar received by the arts generated a $2.40 return to other local businesses, tax revenue, and improved the quality of life in Volusia County.

I’m always intrigued by the economic output the arts generate in their respective communities and did some digging. According to Americans for the Arts’s most recent Arts and Economic Prosperity report, in 2022, the local tax revenue impact of arts organizations alone on Volusia County ($1,269,477) was more than double the arts and culture grant funding, which has remained at $611,758 since 2012. This doesn’t account for the partnerships and patronage of other businesses that the organizations and audiences engage in.

Lemoine has such passion for the arts as gathering spaces and community builders. She went on to quote the president of Volusia Pride, Ann-Marie Willacker, at a county council meeting. She said that when the government is trying to block out a specific group of members of our community who also pay taxes, then private businesses get the idea that maybe they shouldn’t partner or accept Pride groups or LGBTQ+ citizens at their establishments. “We are so divided as a nation right now, and our theatre organizations really are places that bring everyone together,” Lemoine continued, “and I think our communities need more of that.”

She detailed what exactly she thought our communities needed more of with a story of Shoestring’s recent production of Fiddler on the Roof. She told me she was anxious to produce the show right now, with the current climate around the Israeli occupation of Palestine, but that she was proved wrong. It was the exact right show for the current moment, as their cast of thirty community members of all ages, abilities, and backgrounds curated an environment of support, education, and respect. That creating the production united them in a message of great empathy and relatability. She told me how producing this musical at Shoestring was a matter of community conversation and, in her words, “We have to be able to separate our Jewish community members from the actions of the Israeli government. And beyond that, what the people in fictional Anatevka experienced is not all that different from what’s happening in our country right now.”

I wanted to ask her, from a seemingly helpless place, where do we go from here? When the deck seems stacked against Floridian theatremakers, and we are constantly thrown curveballs, what do we do?

With the Fiddler on the Roof production in mind, she told me, “I think we keep doing what we’re doing and encouraging people to find and be their authentic selves; to learn about each other; and to learn that people who aren’t like you are not so scary. After all, we’re not all that different.”

Florida, in its governance, loves to set an example. It is now wielding its funds as a weapon against those who ideologically oppose it, and theatremakers are boldly fighting back. Let this be the blueprint, this impetus to create within a system that doesn’t want us to. Let that be the example.