Letter to the Membership from LMDA President Sara Freeman
February 25, 2025
Dear LMDA Members:
I am writing in the middle of February, as much of our members are experiencing a cold and snowy winter, as well as a difficult political and artistic moment.
The issues at hand are thorny and deserve care; they are creating widespread impact . The Trump Administration is creating chaos throughout the institutional infrastructure of the United States. Our Canadian and Mexican members are feeling anxiety too because the intense effects on the arts and educational sectors where most of our membership across the Americas find their work are not confined by borders.
For our organization and our field, the release of new guidelines by the US National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the changes in leadership at the Kennedy Center and the near-immediate censorship that followed (see the Dramatist Guild’s Statement), and the threat of closing the Department of Education put forth by the Trump administration are hugely consequential and destabilizing. This, coupled with the ongoing crisis in Gaza, the deathly environmental disasters like the Southern California wildfires, and the economic and military targeting of Canada and Mexico on multiple fronts, make all of our lives and work extremely precarious. We owe it to each other as artists, collaborators, colleagues, and friends, to speak the truth about these circumstances, the directives in Executive Orders, and how we can support each other and maintain our values in the face of uncertainty, defunding, or even outright coercion.
I’m going to address two areas that are intertwined but require some separate thinking. Please also see LMDA’s separate statement on events at the Kennedy Center. First, there is the question of NEA grants, given recent updates about granting guidelines and compliance. Second, there is our conference, both in 2025 and 2026.
LMDA has been receiving NEA grants to support its annual conference for many years. It was a focused goal and a matter of pride to become an organization that built a relationship with the NEA and mobilized those funds to support dramaturgical artistry. We have a current proposal in the cycle to support the 2025 conference that we would normally expect to hear about in April. We also would usually begin work on a proposal for the 2026 cycle in May and June of this year.
At this moment, we do not know what will happen with the 2025 grant; nor have we decided if we will seek funding from the NEA from 2026. Our grant writer and executive leaders have attended webinars put on by both the NEA and Theatre Communications Group (TCG) and will be following all we can in the coming weeks to better understand the evolving situation.
Currently, the NEA is issuing guidelines telling organizations that being in receipt of grant funds requires being in compliance with all Executive Orders of the US administration. Current Executive Orders about gender, citizenship, and meritocracy in particular are confusing, overly general, and meant to be intimidating. We don’t know how long they will pertain, and we are watching closely to see the most strategic ways to still lift up arts and education and perhaps even channel government funds toward the good work of dramaturgs and dramaturgy in protest of the Trump administration’s policies.
But even as we choose our strategy, we have no intention of changing LMDA’s statement of beliefs and values or moving away from our commitment to action for justice and inclusivity. The dignity of our members, in Canada and Mexico as much as the US, is paramount.
When and if we know more, or other decisions regarding funding, Board and Executive leadership will keep the membership updated.
As to our 40th anniversary conference: it will be going on in June no matter the role of NEA funding (whether non-existent, refused, or received). We are fortunate to have managed our budget such that it allows us to stay the course, though it is frightening to imagine proceeding without grant funding. It would change how we thought about other initiatives and our overall budget, but we also must and will hold true to our values.
Even before the new NEA guidelines, we were aware that being in San Diego and Tijuana was highly resonant and delicate given the LA Wildfires and the increased deportation activity propelled by the Trump administration. Nonetheless, our hosts in Mexico and San Diego have affirmed that it is worth it, we are welcome to be there, and that we should not back down from our bridge-building and border-crossing trajectory as an organization. The proposals we have received for conference programming are extraordinary. Our engagement with Centro Cultural Tijuana is opening wonderful doors. The topic of creative infrastructure and dramaturgical collaboration as part of everything (including budgets and politics) is as vital as ever.
For me, gathering to celebrate the 40th anniversary of this advocacy organization, this arts organization — this organization devoted to life-long learning and the power of storytelling and representation — is an act of actualization and hope. The binational nature of the conference also offers a particular affordance: one option for both Canadian and Mexican attendees is to localize their attendance in Mexico. There will be beginning-of-day and end-of-day transportation back and forth between our host sites and a “primary site” for each day of the conference after a joint opening. However, the programming allows for staying on one side of the border for the whole conference if desired.
For forty years, LMDA has lived in nuance, and collaboration, and sometimes the pain and difficulty of systemic and institutional rupture. We are thinking very carefully about how a 2026 gathering might allow us to bring what is best in our membership and our dramaturgical practices into dialogue with what will continue to be a moment of national and international rupture.
Things are not ok, I know. LMDA is going to find a way through, one way or another, because dramaturgs are masters of creative infrastructure. Please come to the conference, engage with LMDA, and keep working for justice, art, and joy.
Thankful to work with and for you,
Sara