Preparing to Be Unprepared
Since becoming LTA’s Executive Director in 2019 it's been my mission to provide our community an artist space to create without exclusionary restraints. This is why we regularly provide means for artistic works, experiments and works in progress to be witnessed, shared and remembered together. This helps build our connections to each other and to the land we live on. This is how you practice real inclusion, learn to recognize and feel belonging, experience the safety that comes with being known and knowing your neighbors, and feel comfortable enough to reciprocate the trust we rely on to live together.
Right now, as the federal gov’t plays freeze tag with grant funding, I am grateful for those in our artistic communities who remain steadfast in their dedication to their mission and demonstrate what that means with kindness, compassion, honesty and humanity. LTA stands with the Playwrights’ Center who, along with a growing number of artists and non profit arts organizations across the country, has publicly resisted new federal guidelines from the National Endowment for the Arts to “cease operating any programs promoting ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion.’" PWC says: (Read PWC’s full statement.).
"Hateful rhetoric and policies like these have no place in our artistic communities; what they call “DEI” is what we call our values. We identify and uplift artists who have been historically marginalized, and we materially support their ability to create their world-changing work, full stop. If you know our mission you know that we cannot choose to receive money from the government if that means pushing artists back to the margins. We cannot hew to the narrowest possible view of who gets to participate in artistic and civic life” (Bring Me the News, Feb 15, 2025).
Standing in resistance is uncomfortable. But we've been uncomfortable before. I believe artists are extremely adept at existing in the discomfort of not knowing. Artists are practiced in observing, expressing, creating and communicating. But I think, most remarkably, before all that, artists are renowned for their willingness to try. Having a lifelong practice of attempting to do unexplainable, unquantifiable, unpredictable things might make it less scary to be scared, making it fathomable to keep on trying.
LTA will continue to share artistic processes that help us practice preparing to be unprepared. We’ll search for guidance from collective life experiences as shared knowledge and conversation. LTA will move forward with the same careful creative intention coupled with the will of social justice as we have for the last 6 years. We will continue to be part of building the shared narrative of our community.
In practical terms this means our HVAC replacement timetable is shifting as we wait for information on the status of federal funding. This also means a hold on our sound studio workshops and audio production program. In the meantime, big collaborations and timely outdoor community projects will move into the foreground for spring and summer (west wall pocket park mural!)
Your presence and support has made our community a little cozier and our theater walls a little warmer this winter. Together we are making art an everyday experience for all, right here at home.
In solidarity,
Bethany Lacktorin
LTA Executive+Artistic Director
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