Quintessence Theatre opened its latest production over the weekend with an urgent plea to the audience over the state of arts funding: Call your representatives.

The Mount Airy theater company is one of dozens of arts organizations in Pennsylvania — and hundreds across the country — that had been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts for the year, only to be informed via email late last week that their funding had been terminated “to focus funding on projects that reflect the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President.”

The NEA stated that it will fund only projects that fit President Donald Trump’s “new priorities,” listing a disparate collection of efforts to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary, “elevate” colleges and universities for Black and Hispanic students, and support artificial intelligence “competency,” among other points.

The email served notice on the defunding of plays and orchestra concerts, art exhibitions, and other projects new and ongoing. In addition, Trump on Friday unveiled a budget blueprint that would eliminate the NEA, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the next fiscal year.

The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance on Monday strongly condemned ongoing attempts by the Trump administration to defund and dismantle the agencies and called for their restoration.

“These are not budget-cutting measures — they are deliberate attacks on the Congressionally-mandated federal cultural infrastructure,” said GPCA president and CEO Patricia Wilson Aden in a statement. “Eliminating these agencies would strip away critical resources from the institutions that preserve our nation’s heritage, strengthen our communities, and power our creative economy.”

The NEA had dedicated 64 grants totaling $1,463,000 to institutions and individual creatives in Pennsylvania for fiscal 2025, announced in January. Those dollars have seemingly evaporated overnight.

For Quintessence, the funding termination meant losing a $25,000 grant for the world premiere stage adaptation of the 1926 literary magazine Fire!! A Quarterly Devoted to the Younger Negro Artists, currently in development. Artistic director Alex Burns said they will have to fundraise from individuals to fill the gap.

“Many of the [impacted] theaters have already spent the money, and now are having to go back and raise money for something that’s already been spent and just not reimbursed — that’s just a really awful thing to do when an agreement has been made, especially between the federal government and an arts organization that is a nonprofit charity,” Burns said. “It’s just really icky. … To do it in this way feels like malfeasance.”

Philadelphia Theatre Company co-artistic director Tyler Dobrowsky said the situation was “particularly hurtful because that is money that’s already out the door.”

PTC had been awarded $50,000 for its musical Night Side Songs, about caregivers for terminally ill patients, and their NEA grant went to covering the costs of touring the show across the city, from Community College of Philadelphia to the Pennsylvania Hospital Historic Surgical Amphitheater to the Central Free Library.

Dobrowsky said the tour was an essential part of the community engagement and accessibility efforts for the show, which was created based on interviews with Philadelphians about the impact of cancer on their lives.

At Circadium School of Contemporary Circus, the NEA‘s withdrawal presents an urgent problem for an upcoming production: The Garden of Earthly Delights, set to premiere later this month, is in “serious jeopardy,” the organization said in a press release on Monday. The agency had awarded the Mount Airy circus school $15,000.

“This is a shocking development,” said Circadium executive director Shana Kennedy. “We received no prior indication that our funding was at risk. Our students have poured their hearts, bodies, and creativity into this production, and now we are left scrambling to determine how — or even whether — the show can go on. It is unclear whether we can raise the funds in time to replace what has been lost.”

The Philadelphia Orchestra and Ensemble Arts lost two grants of $25,000 each — one for its Jazz for Freedom education program for children, and another for the orchestra‘s Pride Concert next month.

The loss won’t jeopardize the programs. The Jazz for Freedom program has concluded, and POEA is going ahead with the Pride Concert regardless. But now the organization has a $50,000 hole to fill.

Making up the funding is crucial to POEA, says president and CEO Ryan Fleur.

But there’s a bigger message: “Please, this is a time to support all of the many arts organizations in Philadelphia, because when the arts flourish, so does Philadelphia,” he said.

Other organizations impacted include the Brandywine Conservancy and Museum of Art, which had been awarded $20,000 for its upcoming exhibition Jerrell Gibbs: No Solace in the Shade, and Glen Foerd, which was to receive the same amount to support its artist-in-residency program. PlayPenn lost $15,000 meant for this summer’s New Play Development Conference.

In the case of Pig Iron School, managing director Jasmine Jiang says their $25,000 grant is currently in an “administrative limbo.” The initial proposal they submitted was not approved, but the NEA allowed them to submit a revised proposal for a different project, and Pig Iron has not heard back on the result.

The physical theater school on North Second Street has faced several challenges in the past year since the sudden closure in June of University of the Arts, which has filed for bankruptcy and still owes Pig Iron about $300,000 in unpaid expenses.

People’s Light in Malvern seems to have been spared from this round of defunding. The theater said it had not received any correspondence from the NEA regarding the status of its $20,000 grant to support a tour of its production Illuminating Bayard Rustin to local schools.

In 2024, Pennsylvania received more than $64 million in federal funding — from the NEH ($28.4 million), NEA ($25.2 million), and the IMLS ($10.7 million), according to the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance. The arts and culture sector added $30.4 billion to Pennsylvania‘s economy in 2023, the NEA reported.

The termination of already-awarded grants leaves local organizations in limbo and jeopardizes projects planned and budgeted for “in good faith,” GPCA’s Aden said in the statement, “Breaking those commitments is not just destabilizing — it is a breach of public trust.”

The arts and culture sector contributed $1.2 trillion to the U.S. economy in 2023, or 4.2% of the GDP, according to data from NEA and U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis published on the NEA website in April. That outstrips the sectors of agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting; mining; outdoor recreation; and transportation and warehousing, the report said.

The cancellation notice from a no-reply arts.gov email address said NEA would now “prioritize projects that elevate the Nation’s HBCUs and Hispanic Serving Institutions, celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, foster AI competency, empower houses of worship to serve communities, assist with disaster recovery, foster skilled trade jobs, make America healthy again, support the military and veterans, support Tribal communities, make the District of Columbia safe and beautiful, and support the economic development of Asian American communities.”

Philadelphia Baroque orchestra Tempesta di Mare received notice that its $30,000 grant from the NEA had been withdrawn. The award was made in November 2024 to fund the group’s Hidden Virtuosas project exploring the artistic achievements of female musicians in 18th century Venice.

It would have been Tempesta di Mare’s largest-ever grant from the NEA.

“The NEA used to have a slogan ‘A great nation deserves great art,’ and I think these sorts of actions speak volumes if that no longer seems to be a focus,” said Ulrike Shapiro, Tempesta‘s executive director.

Philadelphia‘s Asian Americans United received a cancellation notice Friday night of a $25,000 grant that had been meant to support the annual Chinatown Mid-Autumn Festival.

“It said we had seven days to appeal,” said AAU executive director Vivian Chang, who noted that the new criteria for grants specifically cites support for economic development in Asian American communities, which is “kind of the focus of our grant.”

The group will likely file an appeal, hoping for a reversal of the cancellation. But, she says: “I’m not putting too much stock in it.”

The move is the latest of changes the NEA has implemented under Trump as it operates without a permanent chair. In February the agency sowed chaos and confusion among arts organizations after announcing that it would require projects to disavow diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and not promote “gender ideology.”

The policies have since been challenged in court while local institutions have grappled with what they see as attempts to censor and control the arts nationwide.

Leigh Goldenberg, managing director at the Wilma Theater, described the endowment’s changing guidelines and shifting priorities as scary and authoritarian because “it’s not even as specific as a project or an artist, it just seems to be a fear of the arts in general.”

After receiving NEA grants consistently over recent years, the Tony Award-winning theater spent its $25,000 grant on producing The Half-God of Rainfall, an epic mythological poem about an underdog defeating a tyrant, earlier this year. They had been waiting for the administrative next step to submit receipts for reimbursement. While Goldenberg will appeal the funding termination decision, she’s not optimistic. But resistance is part of the theater’s DNA, she said.

“We’ve been very clear that we’re not changing the kind of work we do. But at the same time, it doesn’t seem to matter,” Goldenberg said. “If you are making theater or you are making art and want to connect with people in gathering and critical thought, that altogether seems to have been canceled.”