This week, I’d hoped to be able to finally delve into some of the new offerings debuting in our local theme parks this summer, such as the spectacular CineSational symphonic fountain-and-drone show at Universal Studios Florida. Unfortunately, my plans were derailed when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was asked at a recent press conference why he made the unprecedented move of vetoing Florida’s entire $32 million budget for arts grants, which had already been vetted and approved by his Republican-dominated Legislature.
His response was that he cut the desperately needed funding — which supports nonprofit museums, zoos, orchestras and more — because some of it was “being given in grants to things like the Fringe Festival, which is like a sexual festival where they’re doing all this stuff.”
That bombshell accusation elicited outrage from the staff and supporters of the Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival, which is the largest and longest-running event of its kind in the United States, as well as its smaller fellow festivals in Tampa and Sarasota.
“What DeSantis said about the Fringe Festival undermines the valuable work done by Orlando Fringe and the more than 200 other Fringe festivals worldwide,” says Orlando Fringe Festival producer Tempestt Halstead. “It’s clear he has never attended the Orlando Fringe or the three other Fringe festivals rooted in Florida. His mischaracterization damages our reputation as a whole. Without a valid reason to veto all arts funding, he used Fringe as a scapegoat, which is both unjust and absurd.”
The local arts community’s rancorous reaction to this reactionary abuse of power was hardly unexpected, but I don’t imagine DeSantis anticipated that his action would attract attention around the globe, not only from Fringe’s expected defenders, but from a diverse range of mass-market media outlets that had never paid any attention to the Fringe Festival before.
In a statement, the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals, which represents 32 festivals across North America, called on “leaders and policymakers to recognize the indispensable value of the arts and to support and invest in these vital cultural institutions. … The recent veto of arts funding in Florida, accompanied by statements that mischaracterize our events, deeply concerns us. … To our friends and colleagues in Florida: We stand with you. Your work is invaluable, and your voices matter. Together, we will continue to champion the arts and ensure that Fringe festivals remain a vibrant and essential part of our global cultural landscape.”
Daily Beast reporter Josh Fiallo declared the veto a “dick move,” observing that while DeSantis claimed the cuts were because “I can’t sell the Fringe Festival to taxpayers, nor would I want to try to sell the Fringe Festival to taxpayers,” the governor doesn’t have an issue justifying “spending more than a million in taxpayer dollars to fly migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard for a political stunt.”
Even pastor Mark Wingfield of the faith-based Baptist News Global decried the veto as “an exercise in authoritarian power [and] the next iteration of book banning,” opining that the root cause was “DeSantis’ unhealthy obsession with drag performers,” who made up a tiny fraction of the last Fringe festival’s 170-show lineup.
In fact, the biggest irony of this whole debacle is that 2024’s festival was one of the least sexually explicit in memory, with zero full-frontal nudity (or even bare nipples) in any of the shows I saw. Even if there was objectionable material in some of the adult-only shows, those artists don’t directly receive any of the meager dollars Fringe had applied for, which go toward operational support.
Ultimately, DeSantis’ self-defeating temper tantrum is less about saving taxpayers a minuscule sliver of the state’s $116.5 billion budget than about punishing the arts community that opposed his quixotic culture-war campaigns against drag queens and Walt Disney World.
That brings us full circle to the theme parks, which are not only the cornerstone of Central Florida’s tax base, but the state’s only real export now that citrus farming is nearly extinct.
Parks like Universal and Disney wouldn’t be able to charge their exorbitant ticket prices without world-class entertainment taking up the slack for their often-overloaded rides, and they wouldn’t make ever-increasing profits if talented performers weren’t willing to work in suboptimal conditions for substandard wages.
Orlando Fringe and other grassroots arts organizations are a huge reason why many of those artists stay in Orlando, instead of seeking employment elsewhere. Not only that, but Fringe and its fellows have served as vital training grounds for some of the writers, directors and designers of those very productions that said parks are relying on to attract visitors this summer.
I have a modest proposal for anyone working behind the scenes who got their start in Orlando’s independent theater scene and now has the ear of C-suite executives: Go ask your bosses to cut a donation check directly to each and every arts group that was denied funding. The total cost would be a rounding error on these billion-dollar corporations’ balance sheets, and would help preserve the creative pipeline that generates Orlando’s magic for the next generation.
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