June 9, 2025
PBS recently served up a treat for musical theatre fans: the recent London revival of the classic “Kiss Me, Kate.” It was extra special for me because I appeared in that show myself when I was just out of high school, in a production of the Kalamazoo (Michigan) Community Youth Theatre.
If you haven’t seen it, “Kiss Me, Kate,” is a play within a play, set to Cole Porter’s divine score with tunes like “So In Love,” and “Too Darn Hot.” As the KCYT program notes said, “The company of actors which is preparing to open in ‘The Taming Of The Shrew,’ directed by leading man Fred Graham, includes his former wife, Lillie Vanessi, as co-star. Their romance hovers on the edge of revival, threatened only by, ‘his ego, her temper,’ and a doltish politician, Harrison Howell…A second romance has developed between Lois Lane and Bill Calhoun, who are playing their first Shakespeare.”
I played Harrison, who was wooing Lillie and was written as a geriatric bore. This was a tall order for a 17-year-old in his first role, but our superb makeup artist got me to feel my make-believe age by making my face look like I was pushing 90. I landed a bigger part in the next show, spent two more summers in the group, and appeared in a real Shakespeare play in college. Though I never got close to a professional career, I learned about performing for an audience, which was a great help when I moved into broadcasting. I also had a lot of fun.
The KCYT is now in its 97th year. Sadly, the 98th may be in doubt because in Michigan and everywhere, arts organizations are staggering from Trump’s devastating cuts in funding. The government awarded these grants, the groups budgeted for them, and now the Ministry of MAGA is clawing them back.
We’re not talking about Hollywood studios. These are nonprofits run by and for local people, like the Detroit Public Theatre and the Marcus Jewish Community Center in Atlanta. Even in normal times, many of them operate on a shoestring. If the clawback gets through Congress, there’s no telling how many will survive.
We’ll have fewer curtains going up, fewer young artists learning and growing in their craft, a void in our communities. We may not have PBS and NPR to turn to either. Today I could play Harrison without makeup and wouldn’t have to fake the back pain he moans about in the script. Even so, I’m grateful not to be 17.