Funding Workhorse

Making this play about work, about finances, about the sociopolitical issues implicated therewithin, has taken all my energy and heart this last year. Workhorse is more than a full time job: but like most artists, it is a job unpaid. And like the homeless man on the corner of Haight and Masonic singing "there go some yuppies buyin' more shoes" with his guitar case propped for change, I wonder who and what organization would want to fund a one-woman show about the lies and abuse experienced by American workers, and in particular, women, queers, artists, activists.

Well, who? I set about hunting for corporate and government grants for performers and playwrights, and turned over stone after stone finding not much more than a pile of dirt. As the majority of us, the minority, have little in the way of funding, my only hope was to search out the very organizations I'm critiquing. And unless I can reinvent myself as a 301(c) with a 20+ year track record and a review in the NYT, my only bet is a Bay Area grant of $1,500, which, if I manage to garner it, would cover painfully few of my performing and living expenses.

Like any artist working on staying true to her work and also keeping a roof over her head, I fantasize about the days of patrons of the arts, and of a culture that valued the handmade and local over the Hollywood blockbuster. Everyone tells me to go to L.A.: but Hollywood is still, after all these years, a place of closets, corporations, and conformity. (See Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema.) What I'm working on is a San Francisco piece; something that is of a place, and seeks to create more of that ever-elusive arts community here. I am eternally grateful to David Ford, my director, and to The Marsh for supporting me creatively through this process, but there's a bottom line, too, which usually comes in the form of bills.

How can we create support for the next Margaret Cho and Ellen DeGeneres and Marga Gomez hopefuls? It's not just about my own plight to feed myself and make this piece happen--it's my fantasy too that the great artists and creators coming out of school will actually be put to work doing what they do best, and not be kicked back into baristahood. Because let's face it, nobody wants me or my distracted friends making their $4 latte.