Florida Fringe festivals exemplify taking the high road | Column

“Starving artist” has always been an unfortunate concept. The phrase suggests that to meaningfully seek a life steeped in creativity, one must eagerly subsist on a dime’s worth of spaghetti. It implies that the real payment comes from the, uh, joy? Of trying to get literally anyone to notice your passion projects?

To investigate why there are no “starving investment banker” or “starving anesthesiologist” tropes, visit the 19th-century pages of “Scènes de la Vie de Bohème” by Henri Murger. The story collection about Bohemians struggling to survive in Paris would become the basis for the opera “La Bohème.” The opera would trickle into loads of pop culture, from “Moulin Rouge!” to “Moonstruck” to “Rent.” These works would unite untold 1990s teens perched on the knotty carpet of their ranch homes and cry-singing lyrics about being evicted from creative spaces, all while their tired parents made dinner. Not that I know any of those former teens. Ahem.

After so much time, we’re still doing this dance, this tragic tango in which artists have to play the role of broke clowns. Even after all the evidence pointing to arts and culture boosting brain power and infusing local economies, not to mention simply bringing people joy, artists must juggle multiple gigs to make ends meet. Cultural organizations vie for funding year after year, whether it’s in the lines of state budgets or the halls of schools that rank sports over drama clubs, marching bands and art studios.

And after all this time, leave it to artists to step up anyway. They’re still offering to go without.

In an open letter, Tampa and Orlando Fringe festival organizers showed they are willing take the high road for the good of the community. They pledged to give up their grant money for the coming year if Gov. Ron DeSantis restores funding to others.

When DeSantis slashed his red pen through culture in June, vetoing $32 million for more than 600 Florida groups, he pointed to “sexual” Fringe festivals in Orlando and Tampa. It’s a strange argument. Fringe festivals, which date back to Scotland in the 1940s, include a mix of storytelling, improv, dance and comedy. It’s art on the fringes, work that exists outside the norm and lacks a traditional home. Any adult content is vetted and marked with age restrictions, and the money in question doesn’t even go to individual artists. Grants help the festivals function.

Furthermore: Grow up?

If the governor was so pressed about a single Fringe offering called “Captain Havoc & the Big-Titty Bog Witches” — I personally cannot wait to get a ticket — or one called “Florida Fever Dream” that came packaged with a political cartoon making fun of him, this decision tracks with his broader record of vindictiveness. But he didn’t have to take down infusions for the Tampa Museum of Art, Creative Pinellas, ZooTampa at Lowry Park, the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, Friends of Ybor or any other of the 77 nonprofits in Tampa Bay slated to benefit, many of them small operations that rely on the funding to survive.

Remember, $32 million was only 0.02% of Florida’s $117 billion budget. Arts and culture funding, already a meager drop in a bucket, has been relegated to a dry patch. Any so-called starving artists could be forgiven for feeling defeatist in the face of such juvenile antics, prolonged neglect and willful misunderstanding of art’s profound human essentialism.

But in writing their letter, Fringe organizers have chosen to be generous and open-hearted. They’ve vowed to find a way forward in a political moment that has rejected their contributions outright. Despite the centuries-old stigma that creativity must always fall off the bottom of a budget, la vie de bohème can’t be so easily silenced.

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