NEA Insists No Tax Dollars Spent on Trumpified 'Julius Caesar' at NYC's Shakespeare in the Park

Joan Marcus

The National Endowment for the Arts said on Monday that no public funds were spent on the Public Theater’s production of “Julius Caesar,” featuring a facsimile of Donald Trump.

“In the past, the New York Shakespeare Festival has received project-based NEA grants to support performances of Shakespeare in the Park by the Public Theater,” the organization said in a statement. “However, no NEA funds have been awarded to support this summer’s Shakespeare in the Park production of Julius Caesar and there are no NEA funds supporting the New York State Council on the Arts’ grant to Public Theater or its performances.”

Directed by Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis, the Shakespeare in the Park production began performances on May 23 and officially opened on Monday. The show made headlines when Delta Airlines and Bank of America both announced that they would be pulling their sponsorship of the show due to its subject matter.

Also Read: Delta Airlines, Bank of America Dump NYC's Public Theater Over 'Graphic' Trumpified 'Julius Caesar'

“No matter what your political stance may be, the graphic staging of Julius Caesar at this summer’s Free Shakespeare in the Park does not reflect Delta Air Lines’ values,” Delta said in a statement, ending its four-year-old sponsorship.

“The Public Theater chose to present Julius Caesar in a way that was intended to provoke and offend,” a Bank of America spokesperson said in a statement obtained by TheWrap. “Had this intention been made known to us, we would have decided not to sponsor it.”

The productions stars Gregg Henry as the title character, rendered as a stand-in for the president, complete with blond hair, an overlong necktie and a tendency toward verbal bluster. The assassination of Caesar — foretold by a soothsayer wearing an Anonymous-style Guy Fawkes mask — is a bloody climax of the production with lots of stage blood deployed.

7 People Defending Kathy Griffin After Decapitated Trump Photo Shoot (Photos)

Kathy Griffin's photo of herself posing with the severed head of Donald Trump has been met with widespread condemnation and already cost the comedian her gig at CNN. But a few individuals are still publicly standing by Griffin, even if they don't entirely approve of her actions.
Jim Carrey came to Griffin's defense when asked about the photo at the premiere of his Showtime series "I'm Dying Up Here." Carrey told Entertainment Tonight that it's Griffin's duty to "cross the line at all times," adding that comedians are the "last line of defense."
Getty Images
Ricky Gervais also defended Griffin in an interview with TheWrap, saying that the photo was in poor taste, but ultimately harmless. "The only way you could say she went wrong was that it was a bit crass," Gervais said. "It wasn't great art. But OK, let’s say it was bad art. So what? Nobody got hurt. That wasn’t a real head."
Getty Images
The photographer Tyler Shields is also defending the photo as an artistic statement and an expression of his First Amendment right to free speech. "There’s the famous quote, 'I don’t agree with you, but I’ll defend your right to say it,'” Shields told Entertainment Weekly. "I might not agree with [Trump], she definitely doesn’t agree with him, but I’ll defend my right to be able to say whatever I want until I die."
Getty Images
"I still love Kathy Griffin," Jamie Foxx told Entertainment Tonight, when asked about the backlash. "Don't kill the comedian! There's a lot of people out here doing really bad things and every time a comedian says anything, says something about peanuts, [people say], 'You're peanut-shaming!' [A comedian] says something about dolphins [people say], 'Oh my god, you're a dolphin-shamer.' We're the comics, we're entertainers, we don't mean any harm."
Getty Images
Former CNN star Larry King took a similar stance, saying the image was “in terrible taste,” but ultimately expressing sympathy for Griffin as a friend. “She’s my friend. She made a mistake. She apologized. Let it go," King told TMZ, adding that he would not have fired Griffin had he been running CNN.
Getty Images
‘Inside Amy Schumer’ writer Mike Lawrence came down on Griffin for apologizing for the stunt in a post on Facebook. “You know what you did and should own it. It wasn’t a riff onstage or a joke you had done once or twice," he wrote. "You wanted a reaction and got it. So live in it. Don’t apologize."
Getty Images
Rosie O’Donnell tweeted about Griffin’s stunt by saying that she “didn’t find it funny at all.” But the longtime Trump critic has also retweeted a number of messages from users who say that similar actions — including people burning or lynching effigies of Barack Obama — have not been met with the same level of outrage.
Getty Images
Civil rights attorney Lisa Bloom announced on Thursday that she will represent Griffin, and will host a press conference on Friday to "explain the true motivation behind the image, and respond to the bullying from the Trump family she has endured."
Getty Images

1 of 9

Griffin has been criticized from both the left and the right, but a few people are standing by her

Kathy Griffin's photo of herself posing with the severed head of Donald Trump has been met with widespread condemnation and already cost the comedian her gig at CNN. But a few individuals are still publicly standing by Griffin, even if they don't entirely approve of her actions.

View In Gallery