In the days since Gov. Ron DeSantis blamed them for his decision to veto $32 million in state funding intended for arts and culture organizations, leaders of Florida’s four fringe festivals say they have had an outpouring of support from their patrons and other arts organizations.
But some worry that the governor’s decision could mean drastic changes in how money is allocated in the future and whether they should even apply for funding if it will jeopardize money for hundreds of other organizations.
Before he signed the state’s $116.5 billion budget in June, DeSantis cut nearly $1 billion in funding, including two line items geared to arts programs and supporting some arts-related construction projects. It was the first time in recent memory that arts funding was totally slashed in the state.
A week later, he said the veto was triggered because of programs like fringe festivals.
“We didn’t have control over how it was being given,” DeSantis said at the news conference. “So you’re having your tax dollars being given in grants to things like the fringe festival, which is a sexual festival where they’re doing all this stuff. How many of you think your tax dollars should go to fund that? Not many people would do that.”
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He vetoed $26 million the legislature approved to fund more than 600 cultural and museum programs across the state, and another $6 million earmarked in cultural facilities grants for 15 arts-related building projects. State law requires the governor to either approve or veto all the funding. He does not have the option to remove individual grants.
His decision shocked arts leaders across the state who count on the funding to support programs and staffing. The funding rules require organizations to match the state money.
Different interpretations of “all this stuff”
The “stuff” DeSantis refers to, fringe festival leaders said, is a wide-ranging assortment of theater, music, dance and other genres being created by artists who get an outlet for new types of storytelling and performance styles without a lot of institutional pressures they would find at more traditional theaters.
“It’s so unfortunate that people potentially heard it referred to as a sex festival,” said Trish Parry, who launched the Tampa International Fringe Festival in 2017. “Fringe festivals are an excellent gateway to the performing arts because it’s really cool, modern, edgy work that people can get behind more easily without having a heavy institutional theater background.”
Parry describes the festivals as “the harbinger of the revitalization of theater across North America. I think most people aren’t taking what he said to heart. It might have been a genuine misunderstanding.”
But Bill Taylor, the founder and artistic director of Theatre Conspiracy in Fort Myers who launched the Fringe Fort Myers Festival two years ago, said the governor “needs to educate himself on what a fringe festival truly is and what it brings to a community because fringe is for everybody. That’s the important part of it.”
Funding for Fringe Fort Myers comes through the Alliance for the Arts, an umbrella organization involving numerous theater, visual art, youth arts, cinema and other programs.
Parry said “no state funding has ever been given directly to artists to fund their projects. The money goes to our organization to present fringe.”
She said one show in this year’s festival may have drawn more attention than expected with the title “Capt. Havoc and the Big-Titty Bog Witches.” She said it featured some rude language but “it was really just a regular comedy, a satire” about a greedy developer who wants to buy a Villages-type community and turn it into a swinging senior center. Parry said it was labeled for people 18 and over.
At this year’s second Squeaky Wheel Fringe in Sarasota last month, one of the productions was a burlesque-type show that founder Megan Radish said was also open only to those 18 and over.
Funding fringe festivals
Tampa Fringe was in line to receive less than $7,500 in this year’s state budget, a fraction of the roughly $70,500 that the Orlando Fringe Festival would have received if DeSantis had approved the arts funding. Orlando Fringe began in 1992 and is the longest-running fringe festival in the United States, with dozens of performances in multiple venues attracting a wide-ranging audience of local residents and tourists over several weeks.
Radish, who started Squeaky Wheel Fringe in Sarasota in 2023, said the group is too new to have qualified for state money.
“We are not seeking government funding. We’re a smaller organization as yet so there’s not really been a need” she said. “I won’t say there will never be a need.”
In general, artists receive most if not all of the ticket sales. The festival organizers support their operations with merchandise sales or ticket surcharges or fees.
At this year’s Squeaky Wheel festival, featuring nine different productions over five days in June, show tickets ranged from $3.50 to $12. Artists set their own ticket prices, and the festival charged $3.50 per ticket to support the program and rent the venue.
“We want to keep the prices low so that more people can afford to attend,” Radish said.
Ticket sales were up about 30 percent this year over the inaugural festival in 2023.
What are the origins of fringe?
The idea of a Fringe festival dates back to 1947 with the start of The Fringe in Edinburgh Scotland, which runs around the Edinburgh International Festival, an invitation-only festival.
In a statement posted on its Facebook Page, Orlando Fringe said the governor “incorrectly characterized our festival and misrepresented our contributions to the arts community, locally, nationally and internationally.” The statement said the organization’s mission is “to foster a vibrant community of artists, providing low barriers of entry to produce and enjoy art across diverse genres including theater, dance, music, puppetry, circus as well as children’s programming and visual arts.”
Fringe festivals support artists and creativity
“We offer a platform,” Radish said. “We are open to stories and acts at any point in their creative process. It’s about getting new stories off the ground.” She said the festival is open to all subjects but “we don’t allow any hate speech. Otherwise, the floor is open.”
Scott Keys, a longtime theater teacher at Sarasota’s Booker High School’s Visual and Performing Arts Center and a freelance community theater director, created original shows for the first two Squeaky Wheel festivals.
“Having retired from public school education, where I had to be very careful about the material we produced with high schoolers, I just found it was a way to either express things from a more adult point of view or a more personal point of view,” Keys said about his shows.
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This year’s festival production of “Tea and Armageddon” had some “political overtones that I thought were interesting to express, talking about the state of our world and the absurdity of it all. It was based on Alice in Wonderland’s Mad Hatter Tea Party. “I’m still very conscientious of audiences and not wanting to offend. My pieces are pretty vanilla compared to what some fringe festival pieces might be about.”
Taylor said it wouldn’t be fair to Parry’s “organization not to apply for funding. They shouldn’t be cut out of funding because they’re a fringe festival. They’re supporting artists.”
Fringe Fort Myers has not made a plan for next year’s event or funding at this point, but Taylor said he fears there will be changes in the funding process.
“I have a feeling next year, the state is going to ask arts organizations to sign some type of agreement to get funding that they won’t do x, y or z, but the description of x, y and z will be vague enough to scare everyone off to do anything on the edge. I wouldn’t sign something like that.”
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