Foundational Flaws
Written by Grants Director, Robert Linder
I messed up.
As Sundown’s Grants Director, I’m always on the lookout for grants that the company is qualified to apply for. As I’ve discussed in my previous blog posts, a company of Sundown’s size and budget is not eligible for very many grants so this search can get frustrating. So finding a grant application that doesn’t require a $100,000 annual budget, a five-year budget plan, or for the company to be located in a very specific place is always something I take very seriously. Earlier this year, I missed the deadline for a grant application that I should have applied for, one that I’ve applied for the previous three years. I could try and make excuses, of course. The application process was during a couple of weeks that I was occupied with tech rehearsals and opening performances for Sundown’s production of Eurydice and I had very little spare time between working on that show and my day job. But this grant was always so easy to apply for that it really isn’t that great of an excuse. The competition would have been intense, and Sundown has never even made it to the interview stage in previous years, but the amount of funding, if we were one of the winners, would have been substantial. It was a grant I long considered right up Sundown’s alley, valid for any project anywhere in the United Kingdom or the United States. The only things needed to apply was a rough budget estimate for a particular project and for that project to be unique, exciting, and produced by new young artists. Perfect for your favorite collaborative company, yes? Yet I didn’t remember this grant until events brought it back to mind a few weeks ago, months after the application deadline had passed. In hindsight, forgetting the application turned out to be a fortunate mistake because the grant in question was for the Kevin Spacey Foundation.
I’ll spare you a detailed description of my disgust and anger I felt toward Spacey when Anthony Rapp came forward with the account of the evening Spacey sexually assaulted him. You don’t need to a recap of another privileged guy realizing (yet again) that the world was an even more awful place than he realized. There has been too much ink (and e-space) taken up agonizing over trying to separate the art from the artist and how we’re more willing to doubt victims when the accused is someone we look up to as an artist or a person. If you’re looking for a local take on sexual harassment, assault, and discrimination in the DFW theatre scene I’d recommend the excellent “Whisper Network” pieces written by Shelby-Allison Hibbs for TheaterJones. If you’re looking for answers about the greater societal problems of Rape Culture and Toxic Masculinity, I don’t have them. There is nothing I can say that hasn’t been said better by someone more suitable to speak on it. This blog is about grants.
So, what is going to happen to the Kevin Spacey Foundation? Will they stand by their benefactor? Did they know the kind of predator Spacey is or were they just as shocked as I was? Was Spacey ever in a position to victimize the employees of the foundation or the artists who were given grants? What do the 2017 grant winners think about all this? I don’t know. No one at the Foundation will answer my emails. As of this writing, the Foundation’s website and Twitter account have both been deactivated. A spokesperson for the nonprofit did respond to Variety, saying “KSF has never received any report of improper conduct either by Mr. Spacey or anyone else connected with the foundation.” It seems unlikely me, after reading the accounts of pretty much everyone who worked on House of Cards saying that Spacey was constantly groping and propositioning his assistants, that no one involved in the Foundation was aware of the predatory behavior. But predators can fool people, and for an actor of Spacey’s caliber, it would certainly be possible. Maybe the people making their living managing the Foundation are good people who were taken in like the rest of us. If that’s the case, I hope they can find better work for a better boss. But if they were complicit, if they covered up for Spacey to protect their own careers, then they owe an apology to many years’ worth of grant winners that they put at risk.
So that’s the unsatisfying ending to my post. I don’t know what went on at the Kevin Spacey Foundation. I don’t know if they’ll be giving grants in the future or if they will change their name or donate the over 1 million they reported in assets in 2015 to a charity to help victims of assault. I don’t know if I messed up, being a huge fan of Kevin Spacey, Louis CK, Al Franken etc. Did I miss something? Should I have known? Should I have at least been less shocked when the news broke? Should I feel guilty about that second in my mind where I ask myself “Can that really be true?” when I first hear about someone I respected being a creep? All I know is that I can’t know, as someone who has never been assaulted or felt harassed or unsafe at work, what the victims of Spacey (and all the other powerful men that have been exposed) are feeling. I hope they can feel better someday. I hope we can make a world where victims are believed and where predators are not allowed to become so successful that they can use their wealth to get close to vulnerable and powerless.
http://variety.com/2017/film/news/kevin-spacey-foundation-faces-questions-1202606344/
http://www.theaterjones.com/ntx/thewhispernetwork/20171127084809/2017-11-27/The-Whisper-Network-Part-1