This week I was hoping to finally take a closer look at some of the new offerings.Rings premiering at our local theme parks this summer, such as the spectacular CineSational Symphonic Fountain-and-Drone show at Universal Studios Florida. Unfortunately, my plans were thwarted when Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was asked at a recent press conference why he had taken the unprecedented step of Veto Florida's entire $32 million arts grant budgetwhich had already been reviewed and approved by its Republican-dominated legislature.

His response was to cut much-needed funding – which supports nonprofit museums, zoos, orchestras and more – because some of it was “given away as grants to things like the Fringe Festival, which is kind of a sex festival where they do all this stuff.”

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Photo courtesy of Orlando Fringe

Orlando Fringe 2024: “Absent from the outside world”

This explosive allegation sparked outrage among staff and supporters of the Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival – the largest and longest-running event of its kind in the United States – as well as its smaller sister festivals in Tampa and Sarasota.

“What DeSantis said about the Fringe Festival undermines the valuable work of the Orlando Fringe and the more than 200 other Fringe festivals around the world,” said Tempestt Halstead, producer of the Orlando Fringe Festival. “It is clear that he has never been involved with the Orlando Fringe or the three other Fringe festivals based in Florida. His misrepresentation damages our reputation as a whole. Without a valid reason to block all arts funding, he has used the Fringe as a scapegoat, which is both unfair and absurd.”

The local arts community's bitter reaction to this reactionary abuse of power was hardly unexpected. But I can't imagine DeSantis expected his action to attract worldwide attention, not only from the expected defenders of the Fringe Festival, but also from a variety of mainstream media outlets that had never paid 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 important cultural institutions. … The recent veto of arts funding in Florida, accompanied by statements that misrepresent 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.”

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Photo courtesy of Orlando Fringe

Daily Beast reporter Josh Fiallo called the veto “bullshit,” noting that while DeSantis claimed the cuts were because “I can't sell the Fringe Festival to taxpayers and I don't want to try to sell the Fringe Festival to taxpayers,” the governor had no problem “justifying spending over a million taxpayer dollars to fly migrants from Texas to Martha's Vineyard on a political stunt.”

Even Rev. Mark Wingfield of the Baptist news agency News Global condemned the veto as an “exercise of authoritarian power [and] the next level of book banning” and said the real cause was “DeSantis' unhealthy obsession with drag performers,” who made up only a tiny fraction of the 170-show program of the last Fringe Festival.

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Photo courtesy of Orlando Fringe

The greatest irony of this whole debacle is that the 2024 festival was one of the least sexually explicit I can remember. There was no full-frontal nudity (or even bare nipples) in any of the shows I saw. Even if there was explicit material in some of the adults-only shows, those artists are not directly receiving any of the few dollars Fringe has requested that go toward operational support.

Ultimately, DeSantis' self-destructive tantrum is less about sparing taxpayers a tiny fraction of the $116.5 billion federal budget than about punishing the arts community that has opposed his quixotic culture war campaigns against drag queens and Walt Disney World.

This brings us full circle to theme parks, which are not only Central Florida's tax base, but also the state's only real export product now that citrus farming is all but extinct.

Parks like Universal and Disney wouldn't be able to charge their exorbitant admission prices if top-notch entertainment didn't fill the often-crowded rides. Nor would they continue to make higher profits if talented artists weren't willing to work in suboptimal conditions for subpar wages.

Orlando Fringe and other grassroots arts organizations are a big reason why many of these artists stay in Orlando rather than seek work elsewhere. In addition, Fringe and its collaborators have served as an important training ground for some of the writers, directors and designers of the productions the parks will depend on to attract visitors this summer.

I have a modest suggestion for anyone working behind the scenes who started their careers in Orlando's independent theater scene and now has the ear of top executives: Ask your bosses to write a donation check to every single arts group that has been denied funding. The total cost would represent a rounding error on the balance sheets of these billion-dollar corporations and would help maintain the creative pipeline process that creates Orlando's magic for the next generation.

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